Inner Ear Hair Bundle Proteomics

描述(申请人提供)：这项研究的目的是发现与听力转导有关的蛋白质，并开始了解它们在听力转导机制中的重要性。对内耳毛束进行了蛋白质组学筛选，以确定定位于立体纤毛中的蛋白质，这些蛋白质是听觉传导的重要结构。这种蛋白质组筛选利用多维蛋白质鉴定技术(MudPIT)来增加低丰度和膜蛋白的覆盖率。对结果数据集的分析将确定哪些蛋白质可能参与听力转导机制，这些蛋白质将被进一步探索。抗体标记将是我们技术有效的重要验证，标记将帮助我们阐明该蛋白质在立体纤毛中的功能。了解听力转导中涉及的蛋白质将有助于理解耳聋发生的功能障碍，并最终可能导致耳聋的治疗得到改进。在美国，每1000名天生耳聋或听力障碍的儿童中，就有2到3人与听力世界沟通是一件非常困难的事情。为了改善对这些聋人的治疗，第一步是了解该系统的正常功能。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this research is to discover proteins involved in hearing transduction and to begin to understand their importance in the mechanism of hearing transduction. A shotgun proteomic screen of inner ear hair bundles has been done to identify proteins located in stereocilia, which are the structures important to hearing transduction. This proteomic screen takes advantage of multidimensional protein identification technology (MudPIT) in order to increase coverage of low abundance and membrane proteins. Analysis of the resultant dataset will determine which proteins are potentially involved in the hearing transduction mechanism, and these proteins will be further explored. Antibody labeling will be an important verification that our technique works, and the labeling will helps us elucidate the function of the protein in stereocilia. Understanding of the proteins involved in hearing transduction will help to understand what malfunctions occur in deafness, and may eventually lead to an improved treatment of deafness. For the 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children in the United States born deaf or hard-of-hearing, communication with the hearing world is a great hardship. In order to improve treatments for these deaf people, the first step is to understand the normal function of the system.