Exhaustive screening of outer hair cell-specific genes. Mus musculus

Mechanosensory outer hair cells (OHC) play an essential role in the amplification of sound-induced vibrations in the cochlea because of their ability to contract or elongate following changes in the intracellular potential. To study the critical roles of OHC, we generated a novel mouse model, OHC-TRECK, for hearing impairment by introducing the human diphtheria toxin (DT) receptor gene under the control of the OHC-specific promoter of the mouse prestin gene. DT administration to OHC-TRECK mice resulted in severe hearing impairment with a decrease in the amplitude of distortion product otoacoustic emissions and elevated auditory brainstem responses. We performed a differential expression analysis between DT-administered OHC-TRECK and wild-type mice using high-throughput mRNA sequence analysis (RNA-seq) to screen for novel, specifically expressed and functional genes involved in the development and maintenance of OHC.