Meeting Abstract
Mechanotransduction, the mechanism(s) by which cells convert mechanical stimuli into electrical activity, is a process conserved across all domains of life and is a necessary facet of our interaction with the world. However, despite its ubiquity and importance, mechanotransduction is not well understood at a molecular level. Leeches in the genus Hirudo, commonly known as medicinal leeches, have been long used as a model system for neurobiology. As a result the characteristics of the neurons in the segmentally iterated ganglia of the ventral nerve cord have been well established, including three classes of mechanosensory neurons that can be distinguished by their responses to light touch (T cells), pressure (P cells), and noxious (potentially damaging) chemical and mechanical stimuli (multimodal N cells). To determine what genes might mediate the differences among these and other neurons, we carried out a transcriptomic analysis of pooled sets of four different cell types. My analysis revealed distinct transcriptional profiles for each cell, including robust differences between the three types of mechanosensory neurons. Some of the most highly regulated transcripts correspond to genes encoding ion channels and their modulators that may mediate the detection of mechanical stimuli, suggesting that my analysis may let us identify new mechanosensory channels and pathways by which mechanosensation is achieved. Future directions include: 1) determining the effect of the loss of these channels on neuronal function; 2) describing the developmental trajectory and organismal relevance of these genes; and 3) directly determining whether a subset of these channels confers mechanosensitivity in mammalian cell culture.
