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The Role Of The Stereociliary Glycocalyx In Hair Bundle Cohesion, Adria Claire Le Boeuf

Student Theses and Dissertations

The sensory hair cells of the inner ear are exquisitely sensitive machines that translate the broad dynamic range of sound intensities in our auditory landscape into the electrical language of neurons. The mechanosensitive organelle of the hair cell is the hair bundle, a cluster of linked, finger-like, membrane-ensheathed projections, stereocilia, emerging from the cellʼs apical surface. As a structure, the hair bundle is highly conserved, changing little yet performing many functions throughout the vertebrate evolutionary tree. The mechanosensitivity of the hair bundle is achieved by the tension-gating of mechanosensitive channels joined to proteinaceous tip links that connect the distal tips …