TOBIN Mélanie

Gradients in the mechanical properties of auditory hair cells in the inner ear.

Project status: closed

The sensory cells in the inner ear, called hair cells, turn the mechanical vibrations produced by sound stimulus into an electrical signal.

In addition to behaving like cellular microphones, they use their energy resources in a mechanical process to actively amplify their response to low sounds. Thanks to the active motility of the hair cell, the ear acquires extraordinary sensitivity, frequency discrimination and dynamic range. These characteristics impose major constraints on the mechanical properties of the hair cell, which are not well known today.

Mélanie Tobin is a doctoral student, and her project is supervised by Dr. Pascal Martin. The purpose is to study the mechanical properties of hair cells in mammals to better understand how hearing works.

Mélanie Tobin
Doctoral student
Institut Curie, Paris, France

Related scientific publication(s) :

Mélanie Tobin, Atitheb Chaiyasitdhi, Vincent Michel, Nicolas Michalski , Pascal Martin.Elife. Stiffness and tension gradients of the hair cell's tip-link complex in the mammalian cochlea. 2019 Apr 1;8:e43473. doi: 10.7554/eLife.43473.
R G Alonso, M Tobin, P Martin, A J Hudspeth. Fast recovery of disrupted tip links induced by mechanical displacement of hair bundles. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Dec 1;117(48):30722-30727. doi:10.1073/pnas.2016858117. Epub 2020 Nov 16.

Jeffrey R Holt, Mélanie Tobin, Johannes Elferich, Eric Gouaux, Angela Ballesteros, Zhiqiang Yan, Zubair M Ahmed, Teresa Nicolson. Putting the Pieces Together: the Hair Cell Transduction Complex. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol. 2021 Dec;22(6):601-608. doi: 10.1007/s10162-021-00808-0. Epub 2021 Oct 6.