Scripps Research Scientists Find Deafness Gene's Function

A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, at the University of California in San Diego, and at the Oregon Hearing Research Center and Vollum Institute at Oregon Health & Science University have discovered a key molecule that is part of the machinery that mediates the sense of hearing. In a paper that will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Nature, the team reports that a protein called cadherin 23 is part of a complex of proteins called "tip links" that are on hair cells in the inner ear. These hair cells are involved in the physiological process called mechanotransduction, a phenomenon in hearing in which physical cues (sound waves) are transduced into electrochemical signals and communicated to the brain. The tip link is believed to have a central function in the conversion of physical cues into electrochemical signals.