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Who does the hair cell's 'do? Rho GTPases and hair-bundle morphogenesis
1Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, Box 314, New York, New York 10021-6399, USA. kollmar@rockvax.rockefeller.edu
Current Opinion in Neurobiology
|August 17, 1999
Abstract:
The mechanosensitive hair bundles of vertebrate hair cells exhibit a remarkable variety of shapes. For a given location in a sensory epithelium, however, the shape and polarity of a hair bundle are specified precisely. Recent findings, in particular with analogous experimental systems of actin polymerization, suggest a model of hair-bundle morphogenesis whereby different Rho guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) regulate the initiation phase and the elongation phase of local actin-filament assembly at the hair cell's apical membrane.