Scripps Research Institute Scientists Provide New Grasp of Soft Touch LA JOLLA, CA April 6, 2014 A study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has helped solve a long-standing mystery about the sense of touch.
The gentle touch sensations that convey the stroke of a finger, the fine texture of something grasped and the light pressure of a breeze on the skin are brought to us by nerves that often terminate against special skin cells called Merkel cells. These skin cells' role in touch sensation has long been debated in the scientific community. The new study, however, suggests a dual-sensor system involving the Merkel cell and an associated nerve end in touch sensation.
In this long debate over the role of Merkel cells, it appears that both camps were right, said the study's senior author Ardem Patapoutian, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator and professor at TSRI's Dorris Neuroscience Center and Department of Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience. The nerve ends respond to touch, but so do the adjacent Merkel cells.
The report appears in an Advance Online Publication of Nature on April 6, 2014.
In addition to elucidating the mammalian sense of touch, whose mechanisms until recently have been obscure, the findings could have relevance for certain pain syndromes in which touch sensations trigger pain even the light pressure of a shirt on the skin or a breeze against the skin.
Touch and pain are very closely related, said Patapoutian, and thus the characterization of these mechanisms of touch should help us to understand pain better too.
Opening the Flow
The discovery comes four years after the Patapoutian laboratory identified a protein called Piezo2 as a mechanically activated ion channel protein with a likely role in touch sensation.
Ion channels are embedded in the outer membranes of various cell types and nerve fibers throughout the body. Piezo2 ion channels have been thought to respond to the stretching of the nerve membrane where they are embedded a stretching caused by something that presses against the skin, for example.
When activated in this way, the ion channels open to allow an inflow of sodium or other positively charged ions. Such a surge of electrical charge into a nerve can initiate a signal that travels up the nerve and to the brain via a relay of neurons along the spine.
In the earlier study, Patapoutian's team found evidence that Piezo2 proteins are made within touch-sensing neurons, including gentle-touch neurons that extend their nerves into the skin and against the mysterious Merkel cells.
In the new study, Patapoutian and his colleagues set out to learn more.
In Pursuit of Answers
The team began by creating a line of mice in which the activity of the Piezo2 gene also causes the production of a fluorescing protein called GFP. Guided by these fluorescent beacons as well as other markers, they found a high concentration of Piezo2 in Merkel cells in the skin of the mice.
You can easily miss Piezo2 expression in the skin, because it's not highly expressed there, aside from the tiny population of Merkel cells, said first author Seung-Hyun Woo, a postdoctoral fellow in the Patapoutian laboratory.
Next the researchers sought proof of Piezo2's role in Merkel cells, essentially by subtracting the protein from those cells and observing the result. To do this a particularly challenging feat they created a new line of mice in which the Piezo2 gene is specifically knocked out of all skin cells, including Merkel cells, but left intact everywhere else where it is ordinarily produced.
Piezo2 skin-knockout mice and their Merkel cells appeared normal. The mice also responded normally on most standard tests of touch and pain sensitivity. But on the so-called von Frey test, in which thin, bendable fibers are pressed against the mice's paws with varying force, the effect of the loss of Piezo2 became apparent. The mice whose Merkel cells lacked Piezo2 didn't respond to the gentler forces as much as the control mice did, said Woo.
Examining this change in responsiveness in more detail, Woo and her colleagues isolated Merkel cells from the two groups of mice. They found that those Merkel cells lacking Piezo2 failed to show the usual current flows when gently pushed with a probe.
Collaborating researchers in the laboratory of Cheryl L. Stucky at the Medical College of Wisconsin showed that gentle touch-sensing nerves known as slowly adapting (SA) A fibers generally responded with a lower frequency of signaling in the mice lacking Piezo2 in Merkel cells. Another collaborating laboratory, led by Ellen A. Lumpkin at Columbia University, showed that Merkel cell-associated nerves also responded less durably to test stimuli on skin in these same mice.
It all shows that the Merkel cells play an important role in touch sensing and that they need Piezo2 to do so, Woo said.
The findings were bolstered by a separate study from Lumpkin's laboratory of which Patapoutian is a co-author that is reported in the same issue of Nature. In that study, mice engineered to lack Merkel cells exhibited touch-sensing deficits very similar to those described in the Patapoutian group's study.
Other co-authors of the study, Piezo2 is required for Merkel cell mechanotransduction, were Sanjeev Ranade, Adrienne E. Dubin and Takashi Miyamoto of TSRI during the study, Andy D. Weyer of the Stucky Laboratory at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Yoshichika Baba of the Lumpkin Laboratory and Zhaozhu Qiu, Matt Petrus and Kritika Reddy of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation.
The study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01DE022358 and R01AR051219).
About The Scripps Research Institute
The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is one of the worlds largest independent,
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
30/04/2024
LOUISVILLE, Ky. In another sign that broadcasters are finally using NextGen TV broadcasts to offer viewers new features instead of simply simulcasting existing ...
30/04/2024
OKLAHOMA CITY The Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame will induct Blaise Labbe, a group news director for Sinclair Broadcast Group, May 2 at the 54th Anniversary I...
30/04/2024
ATLANTA and ENGLEWOOD, Colo. Cox Media Group and Dish have ended a dispute over retransmission fees that lasted nearly a year and a half with a new multi-year ...
30/04/2024
Video transport solution provider LTN has announced that it is working with TelevisaUnivision to help the Spanish-language media giant migrate to IP-based video...
30/04/2024
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has released details about how it played a pivotal role in the seamless coverage of the recent solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 by NBC K...
30/04/2024
CINCINNATI The E.W. Scripps Company is adding Seth Walters to its sales leadership team as head of CTV sales, effective April 29....
30/04/2024
The force was strong at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park on Saturday night, April 27, 2024, as the night netted the ballpark's first official sellout crowd of...
30/04/2024
Revry, a network celebrating queer culture. said its second annual NewFront presentation will be a cabaret-type spectacle showcasing the spirit of the LGBTQ+ co...
30/04/2024
Family Entertainment Television (FETV) said that the Western series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp will be joining the network's afternoon lineup startin...
30/04/2024
Bob Bakish, president and CEO of Paramount Global, will depart the company as Paramount explores a merger, according to numerous published reports. The reports ...
30/04/2024
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Order intake: 5.0 billion, up 47% ( 46% on an organic basis1 )
Sales: 4.4 billion, up 9.8% ( 7.9% on an organic basis)
All f...
29/04/2024
(L-R) Mark Gatiss and Polly Walker on set
Monday 29 April 2024 Further casting is now confirmed for Bookish (6x70), a brand-new drama created by Emmy Award-wi...
29/04/2024
A groundbreaking initiative offering training and mentoring to 30 women journali...
29/04/2024
Even though we've been doing this for over 40 years, a spark of excitement r...
29/04/2024
L3Harris is delivering manpack radios to U.S. Army CH-47 Chinooks as part of the Air-to-Ground Networking Radio program, providing seamless, resilient communica...
29/04/2024
He writes in Defense One: Despite the near-universal acknowledgement throughout the U.S. government and defense industrial base of the criticality of resilient ...
29/04/2024
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
29/04/2024
Codemill aims to revolutionize media workflow efficiency at this years NAB Show by introducing Just-In-Time (JIT) playback technology in Accurate.Video Validate...
29/04/2024
April 29, 2024
-- TF1 Chooses Broadpeak to Power Targeted Advertising for New...
29/04/2024
LOS ANGELES Allen Media Group (AMG) has partnered with LG Electronics to bring 223 Local Now FAST channels to LG's free streaming service, LG Channels, avai...
29/04/2024
OTTAWA Ross Video has announced the introduction of Raiden, a data-driven weather graphics software that combines data gathering, processing, and visualization ...
29/04/2024
Panalux, a leading rental provider of lighting and power solutions for the motion-picture industry and part of Panavision's end-to-end service offerings for...
29/04/2024
Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced that it has received a patent on its technology for dynamic autho...
29/04/2024
SDVI, the leading platform provider for cloud-native media supply chains, today announced that Rally Access Workstation, a fully managed solution for editing in...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, a premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality remote commenta...
29/04/2024
Glookast has chosen Jigsaw24 Media as the only UK channel partner to represent their portfolio of ingest and workflow optimisation products. The agreement, sign...
29/04/2024
Clear-Com played a pivotal role in the seamless coverage of the recent solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Leveraging its cutting-edge Eclipse HX Digital Matrix i...
29/04/2024
PlayBox Neo will promote its complete range of television channel management, graphic branding and playout solutions to EMEA region media content owners and bro...
29/04/2024
Lingo, RuPaul's word-twisting game show, returns for season two on CBS Friday, May 24. Two episodes air that night, and stream on Paramount Plus, too....
29/04/2024
ESPN and Amazon Prime Video are reportedly close to scoring television rights to the National Basketball Association, according to published reports....
29/04/2024
Judge Judy and Hot Bench, CBS Media Ventures' genre-leading court shows, have been renewed through the 2025-26 TV season in more than 95% of the country, Gr...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, an Irish-based premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality re...
29/04/2024
The awards celebrate the craft of behind-the-scenes TV talent and the best programmes of 2023
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: April 29, 2024
The awards cel...
29/04/2024
The team at Milk had to create and deliver the VFX and environment work for the royal residences featured in the drama from scratch
By Jenny Priestley
Publis...
29/04/2024
CEO Bob Bakish is expected to leave the company as early as today, with a new leadership committee likely to run the company on an interim basis
By Jenny Pries...
29/04/2024
Albena Ivanova, director, media and entertainment and strategic products at CHAOS talks to TVBEurope about her route into the industry
By TVBEurope Staff
Pub...
29/04/2024
The acquisition gives Grand Technix the opportunity to expand its footprint in the audio visual and broadcast technology sectors
By Jenny Priestley
Published...
29/04/2024
29 04 2024 - Media release Screen Australia announces James J. Robinson's debut feature First Light
First Light
Principal Photography is underway on Firs...
29/04/2024
Capitol Broadcasting recently became the inaugural company honored with inductio...
29/04/2024
Tonight on House of Zwide: Zanele tells a surprised Zola that Faith fully suppor...
29/04/2024
Tonight on Scandal: A line is crossed and a mother starts to lose focusDon't miss Friday, 26 April's riveting episode of South African soapie Scandal! o...
29/04/2024
Tonight on Skeem Saam: Evelyn puts measures in place to protect her sonDon't miss Monday, 29 April's riveting episode of South African soapie Skeem Saam...
29/04/2024
April 29th, 2024 UNINTERRUPTED AND TRIBECA ENTERPRISES PARTNER FOR SECOND-ANNUA...
29/04/2024
Rebrand and refresh: SailGP talks bringing its graphics operations inhouse for a...
29/04/2024
Reflecting on a Storied Career: Sean McManus Looks Back While Keeping an Eye on ...
29/04/2024
Drones Take Flight Inside MSG: How Sky Candy Studios is Upping the Excitement fo...
29/04/2024
Back to All News
Netflix Announces a Diverse Lineup of Polish Titles to Debut i...
Scripps Research Institute Scientists Provide New Grasp of Soft Touch LA JOLLA, CA April 6, 2014 A study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has helped solve a long-standing mystery about the sense of touch.
