Actin-Binding Proteins Eps8 and Gelsolin Have Complementary Roles in Regulating the Growth and Stability of Mechanosensory Hair Bundles of Mammalian Cochlear Outer Hair

Sound transduction depends upon mechanosensitive channels localized on the hair-like bundles that project from the apical surface of cochlear hair cells. Hair bundles show a stair-case structure composed of rows of stereocilia, and each stereocilium contains a core of tightly-packed and uniformly-polarized actin filaments. The growth and maintenance of the stereociliary actin core are dynamically regulated. Recently, it was shown that the actin-binding protein gelsolin is expressed in the stereocilia of outer hair cells (OHCs) and in its absence they become long and straggly. Gelsolin is part of a whirlin scaffolding protein complex at the stereocilia tip, which has been shown to interact with other actin regulatory molecules such as Eps8. Here we investigated the physiological effects associated with the absence of gelsolin and its possible overlapping role with Eps8. We found that, in contrast to Eps8, gelsolin does not affect mechanoelectrical transduction during immature stages of development. Moreover, OHCs from gelsolin knockout mice were able to mature into fully functional sensory receptors as judged by the normal resting membrane potential and basolateral membrane currents. Mechanoelectrical transducer current in gelsolin-Eps8 double knockout mice showed a profile similar to that observed in the single mutants for Eps8. We propose that gelsolin has a non-overlapping role with Eps8. While Eps8 is mainly involved in the initial growth of stereocilia in both inner hair cells (IHCs) and OHCs, gelsolin is required for the maintenance of mature hair bundles of low-frequency OHCs after the onset of hearing. Citation: Olt J, Mburu P, Johnson SL, Parker A, Kuhn S, et al. (2014) The Actin-Binding Proteins Eps8 and Gelsolin Have Complementary Roles in Regulating the Growth and Stability of Mechanosensory Hair Bundles of Mammalian Cochlear Outer Hair Cells. PLoS ONE 9(1): e87331. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0087331 Editor: James M. Ervasti, University of Minnesota, United States of America Received September 24, 2013; Accepted December 19, 2013; Published January 27, 2014 Copyright: 2014 Olt et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (091895) to W.M. and by the MRC to S.D.M.B. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: [email protected] (WM); [email protected] (SDMB) ¤ Current address: Department of Biophysics, Saarland University, Homburg, Germany . These authors contributed equally to this work.