Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2015 Oct 6:4:e11399.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.11399.

It takes two

Teresa Nicolson  1
Affiliations
Comment

It takes two

Teresa Nicolson. Elife. .

Abstract

Two forms of an unconventional myosin motor protein have separate functions in the growth and maintenance of hair bundles in auditory hair cells.

Keywords: actin; cell biology; deafness; hearing; inner ear; mouse; myosin; neuroscience; stereocilia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests:The author declares that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. The roles of the two isoforms of myosin 15 (MYO15) in hair bundles.
Left: Schematic depiction showing the three rows of stereocilia in a normal hair bundle, with the first row (dark green) being the shortest and the third row (pale purple) being the tallest. This difference in height results in a characteristic staircase-like structure. The stereocilia in the first two rows mediate the process of mechanotransduction, and the large isoform of myosin 15 localizes to the tips of these stereocilia; the small isoform is found primarily in the taller stereocilia in the third row. Right: When both isoforms are defective or absent, the stereocilia in the third row do not reach their normal height (top). If the N-terminal extension in the large isoform is absent in mice, hair bundles form normally but some of the stereocilia in the first two rows degenerate in older animals (bottom). The large isoform of myosin 15 has a large extension (shown in orange) at its N-terminus.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

    1. Belyantseva IA, Boger ET, Friedman TB. Myosin XVa localizes to the tips of inner ear sensory cell stereocilia and is essential for staircase formation of the hair bundle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA. 2003;100:13958–13963. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2334417100. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Belyantseva IA, Boger ET, Naz S, Frolenkov GI, Sellers JR, Ahmed ZM, Griffith AJ, Friedman TB. Myosin-XVa is required for tip localization of whirlin and differential elongation of hair-cell stereocilia. Nature Cell Biology. 2005;7:148–156. doi: 10.1038/ncb1219. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bird JE, Takagi Y, Billington N, Strub M-P, Sellers JR, Friedman TB. Chaperone-enhanced purification of unconventional myosin 15, a molecular motor specialized for stereocilia protein trafficking. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA. 2014;111:12390–12395. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1409459111. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Caberlotto E, Michel V, Foucher I, Bahloul A, Goodyear RJ, Pepermans E, Michalski N, Perfettini I, Alegria-Prévot O, Chardenoux S, Do Cruzeiro M, Hardelin JP, Richardson GP, Avan P, Weil D, Petit C. Usher type 1G protein sans is a critical component of the tip-link complex, a structure controlling actin polymerization in stereocilia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA. 2011;108:5825–5830. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1017114108. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fang Q, Indzhykulian AA, Mustapha M, Riordan GP, Dolan DF, Friedman TB, Belyantseva IA, Frolenkov GI, Camper SA, Bird JE. The 133-kDa N-terminal domain enables myosin 15 to maintain mechanotransducing stereocilia and is essential for hearing. eLife. 2015;4:e08627. doi: 10.7554/eLife.08627. - DOI - PMC - PubMed