Enzymatic Stapling: A New Method to Make Polyprotein

Abstract

Human ear receives varying forces in the form of sound waves creating oscillations in the inner ear fluid. Oscillations in fluid deflect stereocilia located atop of hair-cells. Adjacent stereocilia are connected to each other with tip-links at their tip. Tip-links is formed by a pair of proteins. It is hypothesized that tip-links that serve as gated-spring in the hearing, pull open ion-channels in response to force as sound stimuli. The opening of ion-channel is delicately balanced between the viscoelastic property of the tip-links and wide variations in force experienced by tip-links due to varying intensity of sound. The overall objective of my work is to understand the molecular elasticity of tip-links in the presence of tensile force. We developed a new method of making polyproteins. We use single molecule force spectroscopy with Atomic force microscope to study the force-dependent molecular elasticity of tip-links.