OHSU Discover Molecular Structure That Turns Vibration Into Electrical Impulses

Research Paper:
Structures of the TMC-1 complex illuminate mechanosensory transduction

News Article:
OHSU scientists discover mechanism of hearing



Now that scientists have discovered the structure that turns vibrations into electrical impulses, this can surely have direct connections to tinnitus (especially noise-induced tinnitus that damages the hair cells.)

Hopefully this new discovery can work in conjunction with potential drugs, bimodal stimulation, etc. and speed things up.

 

I had no clue the auditory system was still so poorly understood. Hoping this improved understanding opens up new avenues towards cures for tinnitus and hearing loss!

 

The discoveries continue. This one seems seismic. They've been waiting for this information for decades.

The game changing discoveries keep happening month by month it seems. It'll take time, but good things are coming.

CRISPR/Cas9 was used to assist in this discovery. Just awesome.

 

Would damaging, mutating, etc. this molecular structure make it give off constant electrical stimulation? Isn't that what tinnitus is in the end. You could change it in a way for it to give off different frequency tones, volume.

Quite interesting. Thanks to DeepMind's recent breakthrough in protein folding, you can find every part of that big picture.

TMC-1: https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/entry/A8WVN4
TMIE: https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/entry/F7HRE1
CALM-1: https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/entry/A0A4X3PIR8

 

This is huge! It looks like guinea pigs/mice are a part of the past, we should be studying roundworms. Who would have thought? 60 million of them they studied! And at times they wanted to give up, but they kept on going on with it! Sarah Clark, one of my new heroes (Charles Liberman another).

 

I'm gonna nitpick here lol, but AlphaFold's breakthrough is in protein structure predition, not protein folding.

 

Why on earth isn't this thread blowing up?

 

Wow, 60 million? Talk about big data! Going to give this a read tonight.