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Surprising Discovery Links Sour Taste to the Inner Ear's Ability to Sense Balance

posted by janrinok on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the flavour-of-ear-wax dept.

Fnord666 writes:

Scientists at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences have discovered an entirely new class of ion channels. These channels let protons (H+ ions) into cells, are important in the inner ear for balance, and are present in the taste cells that respond to sour flavors.

The findings were published Thursday, Jan. 25 in Science.

Protons control whether a solution is acidic or basic. They set pH. Not surprisingly, protons do not cross cell membranes; they must be transported across the membrane through special proteins like ion channels.

Although a gene encoding an ion channel that lets protons leave cells has been identified, whether one gene or several genes were necessary to form an ion channel that lets protons into cells was unknown. Now, research into sour taste has identified the otopetrin family of genes as encoding proton-conducting ion channels.

[...] "We never in a million years expected that the molecule that we were looking for in taste cells would also be found in the vestibular system," Liman said. "This highlights the power of basic or fundamental research."

Source: ScienceDaily

Yu-Hsiang Tu, Alexander J. Cooper, Bochuan Teng, B. Rui Chang, Daniel J. Artiga, Heather N. Turner, Eric M. Mulhall, Wenlei Ye, Andrew D. Smith, Emily R. Liman. An evolutionarily conserved gene family encodes proton-selective ion channels. Science, 2018; eaao3264 DOI: 10.1126/science.aao3264

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @02:22AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @02:22AM (#630147)

    "We never in a million years expected that the molecule that we were looking for in taste cells would also be found in the vestibular system," Liman said.

    Why in the world would a bio researcher be surprised that a gene can serve more than one function in different contexts? Something is really off here, its like someone saying a car can drive to the store and the zoo.

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  • (Score: 2) by leftover on Tuesday January 30 2018, @04:07AM (1 child)

    by leftover (2448) on Tuesday January 30 2018, @04:07AM (#630176)

    Loss of perspective? Looking at a relatively low-level mechanism in a particular function then being surprised to see it elsewhere. Car analogy: being surprised to see the same size tires on a Ford and a Chevy.

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    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday January 30 2018, @09:07PM

      by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday January 30 2018, @09:07PM (#630601) Homepage

      It's more like seeing the same model of tire on a Ford used to feed paper into an industrial printer.

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