TY - JOUR
T1 - Echolocating Whales and Bats Express the Motor Protein Prestin in the Inner Ear
T2 - A Potential Marker for Hearing Loss
AU - Morell, Maria
AU - Vogl, A. Wayne
AU - IJsseldijk, Lonneke L.
AU - Piscitelli-Doshkov, Marina
AU - Tong, Ling
AU - Ostertag, Sonja
AU - Ferreira, Marisa
AU - Fraija-Fernandez, Natalia
AU - Colegrove, Kathleen M.
AU - Puel, Jean Luc
AU - Raverty, Stephen A.
AU - Shadwick, Robert E.
N1 - We would like to thank Manfred K?ssl (Institut f?r Zellbiologie und Neurowissenschaft, Goethe-Universit?t, Germany) for sending us the bat samples, and for providing helpful advice on the manuscript, as well as Edwin Rubel (Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle) and R?gis Nouvian (Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier). The authors were grateful to Jing Zheng (Northwestern University), who kindly provided the prestin antibodies for this study (refs. NW802 and NW958). Additionally, we would like to thank all the volunteers of the Dutch stranding scheme who reported and collected stranded harbor porpoises for post-mortem investigation, and Lineke Begeman and Liliane Sol? for their help in collecting the inner ears of harbor porpoises during post-mortem investigations at Utrecht University. We would also like to thank Ron Kastelein (SEAMARCO) for providing the ears from the harbor porpoise cet 401B_Pp02, Kevin Hodgson (UBC Bioimaging Facility), Chantal Cazevieille (COMET), Baptiste Monterroso (MRI) and Vanessa Auld (UBC) for technical assistance, Tuktoyaktuk community hunters and the Tuktoyaktuk Hunters and Trappers Committee who supported and approved the beluga sampling and research, and Chicago Zoological Society for support. Funding. This study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Discovery and Accelerator grants RGPAS 446012-13 and RGPAN 312039-13 to RS, NSERC grant RGPIN 155397-13 to AV and Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Individual Post-doctoral Fellowship 751284-H2020-MSCA-IF-2016 to MM.
This study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Discovery and Accelerator grants RGPAS 446012-13 and RGPAN 312039-13 to RS, NSERC grant RGPIN 155397-13 to AV and Marie Sk\u0142odowska-Curie Individual Post-doctoral Fellowship 751284-H2020-MSCA-IF-2016 to MM.
PY - 2020/7/17
Y1 - 2020/7/17
N2 - Prestin is an integral membrane motor protein located in outer hair cells of the mammalian cochlea. It is responsible for electromotility and required for cochlear amplification. Although prestin works in a cycle-by-cycle mode up to frequencies of at least 79 kHz, it is not known whether or not prestin is required for the extreme high frequencies used by echolocating species. Cetaceans are known to possess a prestin coding gene. However, the expression and distribution pattern of the protein in the cetacean cochlea has not been determined, and the contribution of prestin to echolocation has not yet been resolved. Here we report the expression of the protein prestin in five species of echolocating whales and two species of echolocating bats. Positive labeling in the basolateral membrane of outer hair cells, using three anti-prestin antibodies, was found all along the cochlear spiral in echolocating species. These findings provide morphological evidence that prestin can have a role in cochlear amplification in the basolateral membrane up to 120–180 kHz. In addition, labeling of the cochlea with a combination of anti-prestin, anti-neurofilament, anti-myosin VI and/or phalloidin and DAPI will be useful for detecting potential recent cases of noise-induced hearing loss in stranded cetaceans. This study improves our understanding of the mechanisms involved in sound transduction in echolocating mammals, as well as describing an optimized methodology for detecting cases of hearing loss in stranded marine mammals.
AB - Prestin is an integral membrane motor protein located in outer hair cells of the mammalian cochlea. It is responsible for electromotility and required for cochlear amplification. Although prestin works in a cycle-by-cycle mode up to frequencies of at least 79 kHz, it is not known whether or not prestin is required for the extreme high frequencies used by echolocating species. Cetaceans are known to possess a prestin coding gene. However, the expression and distribution pattern of the protein in the cetacean cochlea has not been determined, and the contribution of prestin to echolocation has not yet been resolved. Here we report the expression of the protein prestin in five species of echolocating whales and two species of echolocating bats. Positive labeling in the basolateral membrane of outer hair cells, using three anti-prestin antibodies, was found all along the cochlear spiral in echolocating species. These findings provide morphological evidence that prestin can have a role in cochlear amplification in the basolateral membrane up to 120–180 kHz. In addition, labeling of the cochlea with a combination of anti-prestin, anti-neurofilament, anti-myosin VI and/or phalloidin and DAPI will be useful for detecting potential recent cases of noise-induced hearing loss in stranded cetaceans. This study improves our understanding of the mechanisms involved in sound transduction in echolocating mammals, as well as describing an optimized methodology for detecting cases of hearing loss in stranded marine mammals.
KW - bat
KW - echolocation
KW - hair cells
KW - immunofluorescence
KW - inner ear
KW - noise-induced hearing loss
KW - prestin
KW - whale
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U2 - 10.3389/fvets.2020.00429
DO - 10.3389/fvets.2020.00429
M3 - Article
C2 - 32851016
AN - SCOPUS:85088994699
SN - 2297-1769
VL - 7
JO - Frontiers in Veterinary Science
JF - Frontiers in Veterinary Science
M1 - 429
ER -