USING TRANSCRIPTOMICS TO FIND THE SHARED GENETIC PROGRAM OF THE PERIPHERAL AND CENTRAL AUDITORY SYSTEMS

Hearing loss is the most common sensory deficiency in humans. The estimate is that about one half of deafness cases are genetic. The auditory system is comprised of two subsystems, the peripheral and central. The peripheral auditory system receives the sound signal and transforms it into mechanical movement and later into electrical signals. The central auditory system is in charge of processing the signals and sound perception. We hypothesize that the same genetic mechanisms affect both parts of the auditory system. Our work supports this suggestion; thirteen peripheral deafness genes are implicated in central auditory processing (Ehmann et al, J Biol Chem 2013). Temporal gene expression analysis of the superior olivary complex (SOC) revealed enrichment of known deafness-associated genes. To compare the differential expression between tissues of the peripheral and central hearing systems at different developmental stages, a dozen miRNAs from the cochlea, SOC and auditory cortex were examined using qRT-PCR. To further characterize and compare the transcriptomes of the cochlea sensory epithelium and the SOC at different developmental stages, we will use high-throughput sequencing to capture mRNAs, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) and miRNA. Funded by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF) no. I-1430-415.13/2017 to KBA and HGN.