It shouldn’t hurt to put on socks, wash hands, or walk about, but for some people with damaged nerves, certain innocuous actions can be agony—a condition called mechanical allodynia. Now, researchers have discovered in mice that, regardless of whether such nondamaging activities are actually perceived as painless or painful (as in allodynia), the very same cells—those containing high levels of the protein Piezo2—transmit the tactile information to the central nervous system. The results, presented by two independent research groups, appear in Science Translational Medicine today (October 10).
“Put these two papers together as a unit and you’ve got it all,” says Jeffrey Mogil of McGill University in Montreal who studies the genetics of pain, but who did not participate in either project. “They used completely different techniques to address the same question . . . and they make a pretty compelling case” for the importance of Piezo2.
When injury or ...
