Abstract
The organ of Corti has evolved a panoply of cells with extraordinary morphological specializations to harness, direct, and transduce mechanical energy into electrical signals. Among the cells with prominent apical specializations are hair cells and nearby supporting cells. At the apical surface of each hair cell is a mechanosensitive hair bundle of filamentous actin (F-actin)-based stereocilia, which insert rootlets into the F-actin meshwork of the underlying cuticular plate, a rigid organelle considered to hold the stereocilia in place. Little is known about the protein composition and development of the cuticular plate or the apicolateral specializations of organ of Corti supporting cells. We show that supervillin, an F-actin cross-linking protein, localizes to cuticular plates in hair cells of the mouse cochlea and vestibule and zebrafish sensory epithelia. Moreover, supervillin localizes near the apicolateral margins within the head plates of Deiters’ cells and outer pillar cells, and proximal to the apicolateral margins of inner phalangeal cells, adjacent to the junctions with neighboring hair cells. Overall, supervillin localization suggests this protein may shape the surface structure of the organ of Corti.
Highlights
The hair cells of the inner ear are crucial to detection of stimuli associated with hearing and balance
To identify candidate actin-interacting proteins potentially involved in shaping the unique cytoskeletal structures of hair cells, we examined the transcriptome of manually-isolated chicken hair cells by RNA-seq
SVIL mRNA encoding supervillin was highly abundant (Fig 1A), with 4.09 reads per kilobase per million mapped reads (RPKM). This was more abundant than several genes known to be expressed in hair cells, including protocadherin 15 (PCDH15) mRNA [32], which had an RPKM value of 2.09
Summary
The hair cells of the inner ear are crucial to detection of stimuli associated with hearing and balance. In the mouse organ of Corti (S1 Fig), apical regions of hair cells and neighboring non-sensory supporting cells, including Deiters’, pillar, and inner phalangeal cells, are tightly connected by junctional proteins, forming the reticular lamina [10]. Expression of svila and svilc gene products were detected in zebrafish hair cell cDNA using intragenic primer sets (Fig 2A).
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