Thyroid hormone is a critical determinant for the regulation of the cochlear motor protein prestin.

ABSTRACT: The most impressive property of outer hair cells (OHCs) is their ability to change their length at high acoustic frequencies, thus providing the exquisite sensitivity and frequency-resolving capacity of the mammalian hearing organ. Prestin, a protein related to a sulfate/anion transport protein, recently has been identified and proposed as the OHC motor molecule. Homology searches of 1.5 kb of genomic DNA 5' of the coding region of the prestin gene allowed the identification of a thyroid hormone (TH) response element (TRE) in the first intron upstream of the prestin ATG codon. Prestin(TRE) bound TH receptors as a monomer or presumptive heterodimer and mediated a triiodothyronine-dependent transactivation of a heterologous promotor in response to triiodothyronine receptors alpha and beta. R

SUBMITTER: Weber T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC122445 | biostudies-literature | 2002 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature