Unravelling Cemip expression and functions in the auditory portion of the inner ear.

The inner ear is a complex organ composed of the vestibular system – which is the balancing system – and the cochlea – which is the earing system. The cochlea is a coiled shape organ composed of three main structures: the spiral ligament sitting on top of the stria vascularis, the organ of Corti with sensory hair cells and supporting cells and the spiral ganglion composed of neurons and glial cells. After an auditory stimulus, the sound wave progresses in the scala media filled with endolymph and induces a stimulation of sensory hair cells. These cells then transmit the information to the spiral ganglion neurons connected to them. Of course, the correct ionic homeostasis of endolymph is required for a good sound wave transmission. This homeostatic function is assured by the stria vascularis and the spiral ligament. The alteration of one of the structures mentioned before induces deafness. Currently, numerous genes have been associated to this kind of hearing loss. In the present work, we focus our attention Cemip – also known as KIAA1199 – that has been associated to human hereditary neurosensory deafness. Indeed, three missense mutations consisting in non-synonymous amino acid changes (R187L, R187H and H783Y) have been associated to this form of deafness. Therefore we would like to understand the role of Cemip in the cochlea.

For that we have analysed Cemip mRNA pattern of expression by in situ hybridization at different developmental stages on cochlear sections. It seems Cemip mRNA is not present in the auditory portion of the inner ear at early embryonic stage 14 (E14) while it is largely present at E17 in the spiral ganglion, in supporting cells of the organ of Corti and in the spiral ligament. This expression is maintained post-nattily until P7. At P21 the expression is restricted to the spiral lamina - an osseous structure surrounding the spiral ganglion. Our on going work is aimed at revealing the biological role of Cemip in the cochlea in conditional knock-out mice.