ABOVE: Scanning electron micrograph of inner hair cells from a one-week-old mouse
GWENAELLE GELEOC
Scientists have been looking for years for the proteins that convert the mechanical movement of inner ears’ hair cells into an electrical signal that the brain interprets as sound. In a study published today (August 22) in Neuron, researchers have confirmed that transmembrane channel-like protein 1 (TMC1) contributes to the pore of the so-called mechanotransduction channel in the cells’ membrane.
“The identification of the channel has been missing for a long time,” says Anthony Peng, a neuroscientist at the University of Colorado Denver who did not participate in the study. This work “settles the debate as to whether or not [TMC1] is a pore-lining component of the mechanotransduction channel.”
This was really the smoking-gun evidence because if you change the properties of currents flowing through a protein, it must be forming a channel.
When a sound wave ...
