Biomechanics of Vertebrate Hair Cells: Experimental and Computational Analysis

毛细胞是所有脊椎动物的一类机械感觉受体细胞，用于检测声音、头部运动、振动和重力。在将机械刺激转化为神经信号的过程中，第一步是微小束的偏转，称为纤毛束，是细胞顶部的一簇毛发状突起。该项目是神经生物学家和生物工程师之间的生物工程合作成果，使用一种新颖的方法来探索这些束的微观力学。显微解剖技术用于量化纤毛束的详细结构，这些数据将用于计算模型，包括不同结构元素对纤毛束力学的贡献，并预测不同形状和大小的纤毛束的性能。一种新型的光纤系统技术正在被开发出来，通过在一个孤立的组织制备上的直接实验来测量束的刚度，以测试模型的预测。这些研究将在亚细胞水平上为机械感觉机制提供重要的基础和新信息，对听觉和其他机械感觉系统产生影响，并且所开发的技术可能在生物工程和生物医学应用以及工业中的微力学方面具有重要应用。

Hair cells are a class of mechanosensory receptor cells in all vertebrates, which are used to detect sound, head movement, vibration, and gravity. The first step in the process converting the mechanical stimulus to a nerve signal is the deflection of the microscopic bundle, called a ciliary bundle, that is a tuft of hairlike processes on the top of the cell. This project is a collaborative bioengineering effort between a neurobiologist and a bioengineer, using a novel methodology to explore the micromechanics of these bundles. Microscopic anatomical techniques are used to quantify the detailed structures of the ciliary bundles, and these data will be used in a computational model incorporating the contribution of different structural elements to bundle mechanics, and to predict the performance of bundles having different shapes and sizes. A novel fiber-optics system technology is being developed to measure bundle stiffness by direct experiments on an isolated preparation of tissue, to test the model predictions. These studies will provide important fundamental and novel information on mechanosensory mechanisms at the subcellular level, with impact on auditory and other mechanosensory systems, and the technology developed may have important applications in micromechanics in bioengineering and biomedical applications, and in industry.