Listen up: gene therapies help grow hairy hearing helpers - August 28, 2008
Hairy ears – yuck. But if you want to carry on hearing pins dropping around you, you’re going to need to hang on to those aural protrusions - or at least those right inside the ear (those unslightly sticky-out ones can go). Hairs in the inner ear are an important way of transferring sound but not everyone manages to keep them, perhaps after one poke too many with a cotton bud. With ear hairs – once they’re gone, they’re gone.
But researchers led by John Brigande Oregon Hearing Research Center reported in Nature yesterday that they’ve managed to grow working hair cells from non-hair cell cells in mice. They did this by transferring the gene responsible for the growth of ear hair cells into normal cells in mice embryo inner ears.
The news has pricked up lots of journos ears. A cure for deafness is on the way, says the Daily Telegraph, while Reuters and New Scientist, among others, play it safe by reporting simply that these hairs have been regrown rather than claiming that all deaf people will be able to hear again any time soon. The authors say that the work might lead to therapies in future. So while it’s not a bad news story by any means, it isn’t quite right to say that a cure for deafness has been found. Yet.
Image: Punchstock
Comments
As I understand it, the hair cells you use for hearing are entirely inaccessible to any cotton swab -- unless, perhaps, you have a punctured eardrum.
This seems to me to merit a correction.
Posted by: Nathan Myers | August 29, 2008 08:51 AM