Boettcher Cell
Boettcher cells are a special cell type located in the inner ear. Boettcher cells are polyhedral cells on the basilar membrane of the cochlea, and are located beneath Claudius cells. Boettcher cells are considered supporting cells for the organ of Corti, and are present only in the lower turn of the cochlea. These cells interweave with each other, and project microvilli into the intercellular space. Because of their structural specialization, Boettcher cells are believed to play a significant role in the function of the cochlea. They demonstrate high levels of calmodulin, and may be involved in mediating Ca2+ regulation and ion transport. Boettcher cells are named after German pathologist Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in t ... Arthur Boettcher (1831-1889). Nitric ox ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cell Type
A cell type is a classification used to identify cells that share morphological or phenotypical features. A multicellular organism may contain cells of a number of widely differing and specialized cell types, such as muscle cells and skin cells, that differ both in appearance and function yet have identical genomic sequences. Cells may have the same genotype, but belong to different cell types due to the differential regulation of the genes they contain. Classification of a specific cell type is often done through the use of microscopy (such as those from the cluster of differentiation family that are commonly used for this purpose in immunology). Recent developments in single cell RNA sequencing facilitated classification of cell types based on shared gene expression patterns. This has led to the discovery of many new cell types in e.g. mouse cortex, hippocampus, dorsal root ganglion and spinal cord. Animals have evolved a greater diversity of cell types in a multicellular bod ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Inner Ear
The inner ear (internal ear, auris interna) is the innermost part of the vertebrate ear. In vertebrates, the inner ear is mainly responsible for sound detection and balance. In mammals, it consists of the bony labyrinth, a hollow cavity in the temporal bone of the skull with a system of passages comprising two main functional parts: * The cochlea, dedicated to hearing; converting sound pressure patterns from the outer ear into electrochemical impulses which are passed on to the brain via the auditory nerve. * The vestibular system, dedicated to balance The inner ear is found in all vertebrates, with substantial variations in form and function. The inner ear is innervated by the eighth cranial nerve in all vertebrates. Structure The labyrinth can be divided by layer or by region. Bony and membranous labyrinths The bony labyrinth, or osseous labyrinth, is the network of passages with bony walls lined with periosteum. The three major parts of the bony labyrinth are the vestib ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Basilar Membrane
The basilar membrane is a stiff structural element within the cochlea of the inner ear which separates two liquid-filled tubes that run along the coil of the cochlea, the scala media and the scala tympani. The basilar membrane moves up and down in response to incoming sound waves, which are converted to traveling waves on the basilar membrane. Structure The basilar membrane is a pseudo-resonant structure that, like the strings on an instrument, varies in width and stiffness. But unlike the parallel strings of a guitar, the basilar membrane is not a discrete set of resonant structures, but a single structure with varying width, stiffness, mass, damping, and duct dimensions along its length. The motion of the basilar membrane is generally described as a traveling wave. The properties of the membrane at a given point along its length determine its characteristic frequency (CF), the frequency at which it is most sensitive to sound vibrations. The basilar membrane is widest (0.42– ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cochlea
The cochlea is the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.75 turns around its axis, the modiolus. A core component of the cochlea is the Organ of Corti, the sensory organ of hearing, which is distributed along the partition separating the fluid chambers in the coiled tapered tube of the cochlea. The name cochlea derives . Structure The cochlea (plural is cochleae) is a spiraled, hollow, conical chamber of bone, in which waves propagate from the base (near the middle ear and the oval window) to the apex (the top or center of the spiral). The spiral canal of the cochlea is a section of the bony labyrinth of the inner ear that is approximately 30 mm long and makes 2 turns about the modiolus. The cochlear structures include: * Three ''scalae'' or chambers: ** the vestibular duct or ''scala vestibuli'' (containing perilymph), which lies superior to the cochlear duct and abuts the oval window ** the ty ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Claudius Cells
Claudius cells are considered as supporting cells within the organ of Corti in the cochlea. These cells extend from Hensen's cells to the spiral prominence epithelium, forming the outer sulcus. They are in direct contact with the endolymph of the cochlear duct. These cells are sealed via tight junctions that prevent flow of endolymph between them. Boettcher cells are located immediately under Claudius cells in the lower turn of the cochlea. Claudius cells are named after German anatomist, Friedrich Matthias Claudius Friedrich Matthias Claudius (1 June 1822 – 10 January 1869) was a German anatomist who was a native of Lübeck. He was related to the German poet Matthias Claudius (1740–1815). In 1844 he earned his doctorate from the University of Göttingen, ... (1822–1869). References {{Auditory_and_vestibular anatomy Auditory system ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Organ Of Corti
The organ of Corti, or spiral organ, is the receptor organ for hearing and is located in the mammalian cochlea. This highly varied strip of epithelial cells allows for transduction of auditory signals into nerve impulses' action potential. Transduction occurs through vibrations of structures in the inner ear causing displacement of cochlear fluid and movement of hair cells at the organ of Corti to produce electrochemical signals.The Ear Pujol, R., Irving, S., 2013 Italian anatomist (1822–1876) discovered the organ of Corti in 1851. The structure evolved from the [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Microvilli
Microvilli (singular: microvillus) are microscopic cellular membrane protrusions that increase the surface area for diffusion and minimize any increase in volume, and are involved in a wide variety of functions, including absorption, secretion, cellular adhesion, and mechanotransduction. Structure Microvilli are covered in plasma membrane, which encloses cytoplasm and microfilaments. Though these are cellular extensions, there are little or no cellular organelles present in the microvilli. Each microvillus has a dense bundle of cross-linked actin filaments, which serves as its structural core. 20 to 30 tightly bundled actin filaments are cross-linked by bundling proteins fimbrin (or plastin-1), villin and espin to form the core of the microvilli. In the enterocyte microvillus, the structural core is attached to the plasma membrane along its length by lateral arms made of myosin 1a and Ca2+ binding protein calmodulin. Myosin 1a functions through a binding site for filamentous ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Calmodulin
Calmodulin (CaM) (an abbreviation for calcium-modulated protein) is a multifunctional intermediate calcium-binding messenger protein expressed in all eukaryotic cells. It is an intracellular target of the secondary messenger Ca2+, and the binding of Ca2+ is required for the activation of calmodulin. Once bound to Ca2+, calmodulin acts as part of a calcium signal transduction pathway by modifying its interactions with various target proteins such as kinases or phosphatases. Structure Calmodulin is a small, highly conserved protein that is 148 amino acids long (16.7 kDa). The protein has two approximately symmetrical globular domains (the N- and C- domains) each containing a pair of EF hand motifs separated by a flexible linker region for a total of four Ca2+ binding sites, two in each globular domain. In the Ca2+-free state, the helices that form the four EF-hands are collapsed in a compact orientation, and the central linker is disordered; in the Ca2+-saturated state, th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pathologist
Pathology is the study of the causal, causes and effects of disease or injury. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in the context of modern medical treatment, the term is often used in a narrower fashion to refer to processes and tests that fall within the contemporary medical field of "general pathology", an area which includes a number of distinct but inter-related medical specialties that diagnose disease, mostly through analysis of tissue (biology), tissue, human cell, cell, and body fluid samples. Idiomatically, "a pathology" may also refer to the predicted or actual progression of particular diseases (as in the statement "the many different forms of cancer have diverse pathologies", in which case a more proper choice of word would be "Pathophysiology, pathophysiologies"), and the affix ''pathy'' is sometimes used to indicate a state of disease ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arthur Böttcher
Jakob Ernst Arthur Böttcher (13 July 1831 – 10 August 1889) was a Baltic German pathologist and anatomist who was a native of Bauska, in what was then the Courland Governorate (present-day Latvia). He worked primarily within the Russian Empire. In 1856 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Dorpat (present-day University of Tartu in Estonia) with a dissertation on the nerve supply to the inner ear's cochlea. He furthered his studies with journeys to Germany, France and Austria, and in 1862 he became a full professor of general pathology and pathological anatomy at Dorpat. From 1871 to 1877 he was editor of the magazine ''Dorpater Medicinische Zeitschrift''. Böttcher is largely known for his anatomical investigations of the inner ear, particularly studies involving the structure of the reticular lamina and nerve fibers of the organ of Corti. Today his name is associated with the eponymous " Bottcher cells", which are cells of the basilar membrane of the coch ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Panx1
Pannexin 1 is a protein in humans that is encoded by the PANX1 gene. The protein encoded by this gene belongs to the innexin family. Innexin family members are the structural components of gap junctions. This protein and pannexin 2 are abundantly expressed in central nerve system (CNS) and are coexpressed in various neuronal populations. Studies in ''Xenopus'' oocytes suggest that this protein alone and in combination with pannexin 2 may form cell type-specific gap junctions with distinct properties. Clinical relevance Truncating mutations in this gene have been shown to promote breast cancer metastasis to the lungs by allowing cancer cells to survive mechanical stretch in the microcirculation. Disruptions of this gene have been associated to melanoma tumor progression. Pannexin 1 is also an important component of membrane channels involved in the formation of thin plasma membrane extensions called apoptopodia and beaded apoptopodia during apoptosis Apoptosis (from grc, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Auditory System
The auditory system is the sensory system for the sense of hearing. It includes both the sensory organs (the ears) and the auditory parts of the sensory system. System overview The outer ear funnels sound vibrations to the eardrum, increasing the sound pressure in the middle frequency range. The middle-ear ossicles further amplify the vibration pressure roughly 20 times. The base of the stapes couples vibrations into the cochlea via the oval window, which vibrates the perilymph liquid (present throughout the inner ear) and causes the round window to bulb out as the oval window bulges in. Vestibular and tympanic ducts are filled with perilymph, and the smaller cochlear duct between them is filled with endolymph, a fluid with a very different ion concentration and voltage. Vestibular duct perilymph vibrations bend organ of Corti outer cells (4 lines) causing prestin to be released in cell tips. This causes the cells to be chemically elongated and shrunk ( somatic motor), and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |