Protein responsible for sense of touch identified


New York, Dec 4 (IANS): Solving a neuroscience mystery, researchers, including Indian-origin scientist Sanjeev Ranade, have identified the protein receptor that mediates the sense of touch in mammals.

"We can say with certainty that Piezo2 is the principal touch sensor in mammals," said Ardem Patapoutian, professor at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) at La Jolla in California.

Mice that lack the Piezo2 ion-channel protein in their skin cells and nerve endings lose nearly all their sensitivity to ordinary light touch, the researchers discovered.

"Across a range of tests, we observed a dramatic reduction in their responsiveness to ordinary light touch stimuli," said Ranade, postdoctoral fellow at TSRI and lead author of the study.

Ranade accomplished the tricky task of deleting the Piezo2 gene from mice to observe whether the animals still responded normally to touch stimuli.

Remarkably, these touch-insensitive mice remained responsive to skin-applied stimuli that are normally painful, such as heat, cold and pinching.

Painful mechanical sensations such as pinching are thought to be mediated by different nerve terminals, which require more force to activate.

The finding suggests that the detection of light, innocuous touch, which we commonly think of as the "sense of touch", is mediated principally by one set of nerve ends using piezo2 ion channels.

By contrast, stronger, pain-causing touch sensations appear to be mediated by a less force-sensitive set of nerve ends with their own ion channel proteins, which have yet to be discovered.

The study appeared in the journal Nature.

 

  

Top Stories


Leave a Comment

Title: Protein responsible for sense of touch identified



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.