Age-dependent Gene Expression in the Inner Ear of Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus Fuscus)

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2017 Oct 27

PMID 29073148

Citations 3

Authors

Beatrice Mao

Cynthia F Moss

Gerald S Wilkinson

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

For echolocating bats, hearing is essential for survival. Specializations for detecting and processing high frequency sounds are apparent throughout their auditory systems. Recent studies on echolocating mammals have reported evidence of parallel evolution in some hearing-related genes in which distantly related groups of echolocating animals (bats and toothed whales), cluster together in gene trees due to apparent amino acid convergence. However, molecular adaptations can occur not only in coding sequences, but also in the regulation of gene expression. The aim of this study was to examine the expression of hearing-related genes in the inner ear of developing big brown bats, Eptesicus fuscus, during the period in which echolocation vocalizations increase dramatically in frequency. We found that seven genes were significantly upregulated in juveniles relative to adults, and that the expression of four genes through development correlated with estimated age. Compared to available data for mice, it appears that expression of some hearing genes is extended in juvenile bats. These results are consistent with a prolonged growth period required to develop larger cochlea relative to body size, a later maturation of high frequency hearing, and a greater dependence on high frequency hearing in echolocating bats.

Citing Articles

Bats experience age-related hearing loss (presbycusis).

Tarnovsky Y, Taiber S, Nissan Y, Boonman A, Assaf Y, Wilkinson G Life Sci Alliance. 2023; 6(6).

PMID: 36997281 PMC: 10067528. DOI: 10.26508/lsa.202201847.

Evolutionary Basis of High-Frequency Hearing in the Cochleae of Echolocators Revealed by Comparative Genomics.

Wang H, Zhao H, Sun K, Huang X, Jin L, Feng J Genome Biol Evol. 2019; 12(1):3740-3753.

PMID: 31730196 PMC: 7145703. DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evz250.

Comparative cochlear transcriptomics of echolocating bats provides new insights into different nervous activities of CF bat species.

Wang H, Zhao H, Huang X, Sun K, Feng J Sci Rep. 2018; 8(1):15934.

PMID: 30374045 PMC: 6206067. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-34333-7.

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