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The work in this laboratory focuses on the study of the inner ear as well as the parts of the brain that are involved in hearing. In both cases, the goal is to identify and study the significance of the chemical constituents of individual cells.
Antibodies are the primary means of identifying cell-specific chemicals by identifying locations of chemicals within the tissue using techniques of immunohistochemistry. Once the normal constituents of given cell classes are identified, experiments are performed to determine what conditions affect the cells' chemical contents.
In the inner ear, emphasis is placed on the study of cells which control fluid and electrolyte balance. These cells are known to be affected in ear disorders resulting from damage produced by excessive sound, damage to the ear by certain drugs, and damage from disease states such as Meniere's disease. The use of immunostaining to assay for changes in cell constituents due to experimental manipulations is a new approach that is revealing a wealth of new information about the normal functioning and pathological states of the inner ear.
To determine the extent to which the results of the experiments, which are done in animals such as guinea pigs, can be applied to human disorders, the same antibody staining techniques that are applied to animal tissue are used on human tissue. The human tissue comes from the Department's Human Temporal Bone Collection, in which there are a great number of specimens of inner ears from donors who willed their remains to the collection. Included in the collection are inner ears from people who had a wide variety of well-documented inner ear disorders.
In brain research, similar techniques are employed. Antibodies are used to identify normal chemical constituents within the auditory portions of the brain. The goal is to identify classes of nerve cells that have characteristic chemical signatures and to learn to associate cell classes identified in this manner with cell classes determined by neuroanatomical and physiological measures. Determination of these associations is done in animals where it is possible to perform physiological and anatomical experiments. In many cases, simply identifying normal constituents reveals a great deal about the cells' functions.
Once chemically distinctive nerve cell classes have been established in animal tissue, and other traits such as physiological properties and connections with other cell classes have been established, efforts are made to ascertain whether there are equivalent chemical classes of cells in human brains. Finding corresponding cell classes in animal and human tissue permits inferences to be made about the functional role of given cell classes in human tissue. The relatively stable correspondence of the chemical bases for cell function which exits across species helps to substantiate the inferences made about functions of chemically characterized nerve cells in humans.
The significance of this research rests in the degree to which attempts are successful in establishing appropriate correspondences between animal and human tissue, and in correctly inferring the function of the tissue components in humans. It is not possible to do experiments on human ears or brains, but the immunostaining technique makes it possible to analyze human tissue for a great variety of chemical constituents. This research program aims to explore this technique insofar as possible to learn about the chemical makeup of both human and animal tissue and to explore the nature of changes that occur in pathological states. The technique is one of the few approaches that permit analysis of normal and pathological states in the human ear and brain at cellular and subcellular levels.
Adams JC. Glutamate decarboxylase immunostaining in the human cochlear nucleus. In: Syka J, Masterton RB, eds. Auditory pathway, structure and function. New York, NY: Plenum Press, 1988; 133-139.
Schulte BA, Adams JC. Distribution of immunoreactive Na+, K+-ATPase in the gerbil cochlea. J Histochem 1989;7:127-134.
Adams JC, Mugnaini E. Immunocytochemical evidence for inhibitory and disinhibitory circuits in the superior olive. Hear Res 1990; 49:28 1-298.
Joe C. Adams, Ph.D.
Laboratory of Otoimmunochemistry
Tel: 617-573-3975 Fax: 617-720-4408
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