Architecture of the mouse utricle: macular organization and hair bundle heights

Hair bundles are critical to mechanotransduction by vestibular hair cells, but quantitative data are lacking on vestibular bundles in mice or other mammals. Here we quantify bundle heights and their variation with macular locus and hair cell type in adult mouse utricular macula. We also determined that macular organization differs from previous reports. The utricle has approximately 3,600 hair cells, half on each side of the line of polarity reversal (LPR). A band of low hair cell density corresponds to a band of calretinin-positive calyces, i.e., the striola. The relation between the LPR and the striola differs from previous reports in two ways. First, the LPR lies lateral to the striola instead of bisecting it. Second, the LPR follows the striolar trajectory anteriorly, but posteriorly it veers from the edge of the striola to reach the posterior margin of the macula. Consequently, more utricular bundles are oriented mediolaterally than previously supposed. Three hair cell classes are distinguished in calretinin-stained material: type II hair cells, type ID hair cells contacting calretinin-negative (dimorphic) afferents, and type IC hair cells contacting calretinin-positive (calyceal) afferents. They differ significantly on most bundle measures. Type II bundles have short stereocilia. Type IC bundles have kinocilia and stereocilia of similar heights, i.e., KS ratios (ratio of kinocilium to stereocilia heights) approximately 1, unlike other receptor classes. In contrast to these class-specific differences, bundles show little regional variation except that KS ratios are lowest in the striola. These low KS ratios suggest that bundle stiffness is greater in the striola than in the extrastriola.