Browsing by Author "Gu, Rende"
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Item Changes in the regulation of the Notch signaling pathway are temporally correlated with regenerative failure in the mouse cochlea(Frontiers Research Foundation, 2015) Maass, Juan; Gu, Rende; Basch, Martin; Waldhaus, Joerg; Lopez, Eduardo; Xia, Anping; Oghalai, John; Heller, Stefan; Groves, AndrewSensorineural hearing loss is most commonly caused by the death of hair cells in the organ of Corti, and once lost, mammalian hair cells do not regenerate. In contrast, other vertebrates such as birds can regenerate hair cells by stimulating division and differentiation of neighboring supporting cells. We currently know little of the genetic networks which become active in supporting cells when hair cells die and that are activated in experimental models of hair cell regeneration. Several studies have shown that neonatal mammalian cochlear supporting cells are able to trans-differentiate into hair cells when cultured in conditions in which the Notch signaling pathway is blocked. We now show that the ability of cochlear supporting cells to trans-differentiate declines precipitously after birth, such that supporting cells from six-day-old mouse cochlea are entirely unresponsive to a blockade of the Notch pathway. We show that this trend is seen regardless of whether the Notch pathway is blocked with gamma secretase inhibitors, or by antibodies against the Notch1 receptor, suggesting that the action of gamma secretase inhibitors on neonatal supporting cells is likely to be by inhibiting Notch receptor cleavage. The loss of responsiveness to inhibition of the Notch pathway in the first postnatal week is due in part to a down-regulation of Notch receptors and ligands, and we show that this down-regulation persists in the adult animal, even under conditions of noise damage. Our data suggest that the Notch pathway is used to establish the repeating pattern of hair cells and supporting cells in the organ of Corti, but is not required to maintain this cellular mosaic once the production of hair cells and supporting cells is completed. Our results have implications for the proposed used of Notch pathway inhibitors in hearing restoration therapies.Item Transcriptomic Analysis of Mouse Cochlear Supporting Cell Maturation Reveals Large-Scale Changes in Notch Responsiveness Prior to the Onset of Hearing(2016) Maass, Juan C; Gu, Rende; Cai, Tianian; Wan, Ying-Wooi; Cantellano, Silvia C; Asprer, Joanna S T; Zhang, Hongyuan; Jen, Hsin-I; Edlund, Renée K; Liu, Zhandong; Groves, Andrew KNeonatal mouse cochlear supporting cells have a limited ability to divide and trans-differentiate into hair cells, but this ability declines rapidly in the two weeks after birth. This decline is concomitant with the morphological and functional maturation of the organ of Corti prior to the onset of hearing. However, despite this association between maturation and loss of regenerative potential, little is known of the molecular changes that underlie these events. To identify these changes, we used RNA-seq to generate transcriptional profiles of purified cochlear supporting cells from 1- and 6-day-old mice. We found many significant changes in gene expression during this period, many of which were related to regulation of proliferation, differentiation of inner ear components and the maturation of the organ of Corti prior to the onset of hearing. One example of a change in regenerative potential of supporting cells is their robust production of hair cells in response to a blockade of the Notch signaling pathway at the time of birth, but a complete lack of response to such blockade just a few days later. By comparing our supporting cell transcriptomes to those of supporting cells cultured in the presence of Notch pathway inhibitors, we show that the transcriptional response to Notch blockade disappears almost completely in the first postnatal week. Our results offer some of the first molecular insights into the failure of hair cell regeneration in the mammalian cochlea.