Gene expression associated with the onset of hearing detected by differential display in rat organ of Corti

Ellen Reisinger (1) , David Meintrup (1) , Dominik Oliver (1) , Bernd Fakler (1)

1 Molecular Biology of Cochlear Neurotransmission Junior Research Group, Dept of Otolaryngology

The exquisite performance of the mammalian hearing organ results from a finely orchestrated array of cell types whose highly specialized functions are determined by their gene expression profile. In rodents, this profile is established mainly during the first two weeks of postnatal maturation. Here, we used the differential display technique on the rat organ of Corti to uncover transcripts upregulated in expression between postnatal stages P0 and P14. A total of 176 different genes were identified whose amount of mRNA increased during early postnatal development. The transcripts code for proteins serving a broad spectrum of cellular functions including intracellular signaling, control of growth/differentiation, regulation of protein synthesis/degradation/modification, metabolism and synaptic function. In addition, the set of upregulated transcripts contained several proteins of yet unknown function, hypothetical proteins, and so far unknown mRNA sequences. Thus, this study unravels the broad and specific transcription program that operates the maturation of the mammalian hearing organ. Further, as 49 of the genes found here map to at least one unspecified deafness locus, our study provides candidate genes for these and novel deafness loci.

Mots clés: deafness genes; hair cell; deafness loci

Ellen Reisinger, David Meintrup, Dominik Oliver, Bernd Fakler. Gene expression associated with the onset of hearing detected by differential display in rat organ of Corti. European Journal of Human Genetics, 2010, ⟨10.1038/ejhg.2010.111⟩. ⟨hal-00558090⟩