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Ed Yeates reporting What if, like many other animals, we could regenerate the small hair cells in our ears so we would never lose our hearing? Researchers at the University of Utah are trying to find the answer by studying a most unusual creature.
From the time we're born until we die, we're bombarded with sounds. Eventually, the little hair cells in our inner ear wear out and die, never to come back again.
As all the sounds around us funnel through the channels of our ears, little hair like cells vibrate--sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Over time, and sometimes that's not too long, if we blast at them too much, those little cells die. In this part of our body, we're not so gifted.
"Most other vertebrates--such as amphibians, reptiles, birds--are able to regenerate these hair cells, even turn them over continuously as the hair cells die. During everyday life they immediately replace them," explained Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski, with the University of Utah's Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy.
Somewhere in the evolutionary chain we developed a mutation that turned off our switch. So, two University of Utah researchers have turned to the zebrafish for some answers.
The zebrafish are proving their worth to researchers. In this case, the tiny hearing cells in the fish are almost identical to those in a human.
But you don't have to go inside the inner ear to study these little hair cells. They also grow outside in the skin of the fish. Inside and out, the hair cells are just like ours.
This is early research with a long way to go, but the long-term goal is to find the genetic fingers that turn on the switch. "So, the hope is really that by understanding zebrafish hair cell regeneration, we'll be able to understand how humans, or why humans do not regenerate their hair cells, and hopefully in the future, at some point, we'll be able to jump start that process in humans as well," Piotrowski said.
The National Organization for Hearing Research Foundation has awarded the University of Utah a two-year, $200,000 dollar grant for this initial study.
E-mail: eyeates@ksl.com
