Hearing Protein

Scientists believe they have discovered the protein responsible for converting sound into an electrical response the brain can understand and act upon. 8216;8216;This is certainly one of the Holy Grails in the hearing world,8217;8217; said Peter Gillespie, a professor at Oregon Health 038; Sciences University in Portland. 8216;8216;Everyone is excited, but there is still a lot that needs to be done to prove that this is the right protein.8217;8217;

The finding of TRPA1 marks the end of a 25-year search, said lead investigator Jeffrey Holt, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia. He presented his findings this week at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Holt and colleagues discovered that hair cells, responsible for registering sound, develop late in the first trimester, and set out to find the genes that activate this development. That8217;s when they found TRPA1. In the laboratory, they shut down TRPA1 and were able to stop hair cells from performing their job. The cells were no longer sensitive to sound.

They unraveled the structure of the protein and found that it looks like a doughnut. In the absence of sound, the hole in the doughnut stays closed. When sound strikes the hair cells, the hole pops open and lets in calcium and potassium, positively charged ions that result in an electrical signal.

Now, investigators are hoping to study patients with hearing loss to see if the TRPA1 gene is damaged, and/or whether the protein it makes is abnormal.

LATWP