Department of Cellular Neurobiology, University of Göttingen, Julia-Lermontowa-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
Cell. 2012 Aug 31;150(5):1042-54. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.06.043.
The Drosophila auditory organ shares equivalent transduction mechanisms with vertebrate hair cells, and both are specified by atonal family genes. Using a whole-organ knockout strategy based on atonal, we have identified 274 Drosophila auditory organ genes. Only four of these genes had previously been associated with fly hearing, yet one in five of the genes that we identified has a human cognate that is implicated in hearing disorders. Mutant analysis of 42 genes shows that more than half of them contribute to auditory organ function, with phenotypes including hearing loss, auditory hypersusceptibility, and ringing ears. We not only discover ion channels and motors important for hearing, but also show that auditory stimulus processing involves chemoreceptor proteins as well as phototransducer components. Our findings demonstrate mechanosensory roles for ionotropic receptors and visual rhodopsins and indicate that different sensory modalities utilize common signaling cascades.
果蝇的听觉器官与脊椎动物的毛细胞具有相同的转导机制，两者都由 Atonal 家族基因决定。我们使用基于 Atonal 的全器官敲除策略，鉴定出了 274 个果蝇听觉器官基因。这些基因中只有四个之前与果蝇听觉有关，但我们鉴定出的五分之一的基因与人的同源基因有关，这些基因与人的听觉障碍有关。对 42 个基因的突变分析表明，超过一半的基因对听觉器官的功能有贡献，表型包括听力损失、听觉过敏和耳鸣。我们不仅发现了对听觉很重要的离子通道和马达，还表明听觉刺激处理涉及化学感受器蛋白以及光转导成分。我们的研究结果表明离子型受体和视觉视蛋白具有机械感觉作用，并表明不同的感觉模态利用共同的信号级联。
