Abstract
Structural Biology Stereocilia are hair-like structures in the inner ear that transform sound vibration into a neural signal. These structures stop growing in humans early in fetal development, so their resilience is critical to lifelong hearing. Liu et al. used stimulated emission depletion imaging of the inner ear hair cells of mice to observe the arrangement of cytoskeletal proteins at the base of stereocilia rootlets. The elasticity of the protein spectrin may allow long-term survival of stereocilia under constant mechanical stress, analogous to the role of spectrin in red blood cell deformability. Damage to the observed ring-like structures of spectrin was associated with hearing loss in mice. Sci. Adv. 10.1126/sciadv.aav7803 (2019).
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