THE BASIC HYPOTHESIS FOR MECHANOTRANSDUCTION IN SENSORY RECEPTORS

Abstract

One of the most involving problem in the nerve tissue organization is the process of information transduction in the sеnsory receptors and the associated with them sensory cells. The aim of the present report is to review and discuss the data during the latter twenty years about the localization of molecules recently localized in different structural elements of sensory corpuscles and their possible role in the process of mechanotransduction. The most important obligatory parts in the process of mechanotransduction of all sensory receptors are their non-myelinated parts and their bulbous ends or so called nerve endings, like Pacinian and Meissner corpuscles, Krauses bulb, Golgi-Mazzoni corpuscle and Merkel disk. In conclusion, it is still a matter of elucidation in the future to precisely localize the proteins making up the mechanosensitive ion channels. There also exist difficulties regarding the correlation of the physiological with morphological data due to the fact that the receptor axolemma is surrounded by complex cellular structures whose isolation is hard to perform.