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Surprising Discovery Links Sour Taste to the Inner Ear's Ability to Sense Balance
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 [sciencedaily.com]
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 [doi.org]
