Inner ear of chicken yields clues to human deafness and balance...( nd humans says Mark E. Warchol Ph.D....)

nd humans, says Mark E. Warchol, Ph.D., associate research scientist at the Central Institute for the Deaf and a research associate professor of otolaryngology and of anatomy and neurobiology at Washington University and a co-author of the paper. But key differences exist between them allow birds to regenerate these cells. If we can understand those differences, perhaps we can learn how to replace lost or damaged sensory hair cells in humans.

The investigators used microarray technology to compare the activity of genes from the cochlea and utricle of chickens. Microarrays allow the comparison of thousands of genes at one time to determine which genes are active. Lovetts group constructed one microarray containing 426 human genes known to be involved in hearing or to be active in the inner ear. A second microarray held 1,422 human genes for transcription factors, proteins that latch onto genes to turn them on or off. The investigators had to use human genes because few genes in the chicken have been identified. (That situation will change with the mapping of the chicken genome, a project now under way at Washington Universitys Genome Sequencing Center.)

Warchols laboratory isolated and grew the chicken sensory hair cells, then Lovetts group isolated messenger RNA from these few thousand cells. Messenger RNA is a shortened copy of an active gene, but there are only tiny quantities in the relatively small number of hair cells from each ear. Lovetts group therefore used special amplification methods that they developed to make multiple copies of each messenger RNA. Each copy of a messenger RNA clings to its corresponding gene on a microarray and thereby labels the gene with its fluorescent dye.

The microarrays used by Lovett and his colleagues showed that about 600 transcription-factor genes were active to some degree in both the chicken cochlea and utricle, and that about 40 were active in only one area. They also identified 20 inner-ear genes
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Contact: Darrell E. Ward
wardd@msnotes.wustl.edu
314-286-0122
Washington University School of Medicine
22-May-2003

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