I had never even heard of Merkel cells and the controversy surrounding their involvement in feeling texture and shape. This paper in Science submitted by a group from Baylor and HHMI describes work that supports the idea that these cells are involved in light touch responses. They accomplished this by engineering an Atoh1 knockout mouse as this gene is responsible for the specification of Merkel cells. These mice lost the ability to respond to a stimulus normally. This story got me thinking, since blind people seem to have a better degree of proprioperception than non-blind people, could the reason be an increase in the upregulation of Atoh1?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Merkel Cells and Light Touch
I had never even heard of Merkel cells and the controversy surrounding their involvement in feeling texture and shape. This paper in Science submitted by a group from Baylor and HHMI describes work that supports the idea that these cells are involved in light touch responses. They accomplished this by engineering an Atoh1 knockout mouse as this gene is responsible for the specification of Merkel cells. These mice lost the ability to respond to a stimulus normally. This story got me thinking, since blind people seem to have a better degree of proprioperception than non-blind people, could the reason be an increase in the upregulation of Atoh1?
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