Molecular Basis of Mechanosensitivity in Tactile Foraging Birds

生物体周围世界的一切都是通过感官感知的。触觉或机械敏感性是通过皮肤感觉机械力的能力。与其他感官一样，机械敏感性对人类和其他动物日常生活的各个方面都至关重要。它赋予动物感受和探索无限丰富的触觉世界的能力。正是通过机械敏感性，一个人感知力和纹理，传达有关材料属性的信息，赋予疼痛或唤起快乐。然而，在人类和其他生物体拥有的所有感官中，机械敏感性仍然是从细胞和分子角度理解得最少的。目前，对于如何感受和自信地识别微风，或者如何区分微风与温柔的触摸、钝器或母亲的爱抚，只有非常初步的了解。这项建议旨在阐明机械敏感性的内部工作原理，然后将这些知识传播给学童。这项研究的结果将在细胞和分子水平上揭示脊椎动物机械敏感性的基本原理，并将进一步用于激发年轻观众对生理学的兴趣。该提案将从一个非传统的角度来实现其科学目标：通过研究将触觉发挥到极致的物种-触觉觅食鸭的机械感觉。众所周知，鸭子能在浑浊的水中找到食物，几乎完全依靠它们的喙和舌头的触觉。这些器官由机械感觉神经纤维丰富地支配，所述机械感觉神经纤维起源于三叉神经节并且终止于类似于哺乳动物的迈斯纳小体和环层小体的微器官。该提案的重点是揭示使机械敏感神经元能够将机械力转化为电脉冲的分子先决条件，然后将电脉冲传播到大脑，发出物理接触的信号。为了实现这一目标，将采用差异转录组学来挑选出在触觉觅食鸟类的机械敏感神经纤维中富集的分子。每个候选分子都将接受电生理学测试，以检测机械接触的能力。这项提议的最终目标是揭示神经元感知机械刺激的分子机制。这些结果沿着感官生理学的其他方面将通过感官生理学俱乐部提供给年轻观众-这是该项目研究人员为促进学童科学教育而设想的课外倡议。

Everything about the world surrounding organisms is perceived through senses. The sense of touch, or mechanosensitivity, is the ability to feel mechanical force through skin. Like the other senses, mechanosensitivity is vital for all aspects of everyday life in humans and other animals. It endows animals with the capacity to feel and explore the infinite richness of the tactile world. It is through mechanosensitivity that one perceives forces and textures that convey information about material properties, confer pain or evoke pleasure. Yet of all the senses that humans and other organisms possess, mechanosensitivity remains the least well understood from the cellular and molecular perspective. Only a very rudimentary understanding presently exists of how a breeze is felt and confidently identified, or how it is distinguished from a gentle touch, a blunt object or a mother's caress. This proposal seeks to shed light on the inner workings of mechanosensitivity, and then to disseminate this knowledge to schoolchildren. The results of this research will uncover fundamental principles of mechanosensitivity in vertebrates at the cellular and molecular level, and will be used further to incite interest in physiology in young audiences.The proposal will approach its scientific goals from an unconventional perspective: through studying mechanosensation in species which have taken the sense of touch to the extreme - tactile foraging ducks. It is well known that the ducks can find food in murky water relying almost exclusively on the sense of touch in their bill and tongue. These organs are richly innervated by mechanosensory nerve fibers, which originate in the trigeminal ganglia and terminate in microorgans analogous to the mammalian Meissner and Pacinian corpuscles. The proposal focuses on uncovering the molecular prerequisites that enable the mechanosensitive neurons to convert mechanical force into electrical impulses, which then propagate to the brain signaling a physical contact. To accomplish this, differential transcriptomics will be employed to single out molecules that are enriched in the mechanosensitive nerve fibers of tactile foraging birds. Each of the candidate molecules will undergo electrophysiological tests for the ability to detect mechanical contact. The end-goal of this proposal is to uncover the molecular machinery through which neurons sense mechanical stimulation. These results, along with other aspects of sensory physiology, will be made available to young audiences through the Sensory Physiology Club - an extracurricular initiative conceived by the researchers of this project to promote scientific education among schoolchildren.