eLife: Gene linked to human hearing is also linked to sense of touch in sea anemones

An international team of researchers, including several bioscience researchers from the University of Arizona, has published a paper reporting the discovery of a developmental gene linked to the sense of touch in sea anemone tentacles and human hearing

Cnidarians, including jellyfish, corals and sea anemones, are close relatives of bilaterian animals such as humans and other invertebrates

The auditory cells in the vertebrate inner ear that receive vibrations for hearing are called hair cells

In mammals, pou-iv is required for normal hair cell development, and mice lacking pou-iv are deaf

The researchers knocked out the anemone's pouiv gene and found that it led to abnormal development of tentacle hair cells, thereby eliminating the anemone's response to touch

The University of Arizona researchers are affiliated with the Midwest Lab and are overseen by Nagayasu Nakanishi, assistant professor of biological sciences who recently received a NSF CAREER award for his work on the evolution of the nervous system

"This study is exciting because not only does it open up a new area of ​​research into how mechanosensation develops and functions in sea anemones, there is plenty of potential for new and important discoveries (to be reported in the future) )," Nakanishi said, "but it also tells us that the components of our hearing have ancient evolutionary roots, going back hundreds of millions of years to the Precambrian

article title

Cnidarian hair cell development illuminates an ancient role for the class IV POU transcription factor in defining mechanoreceptor identity