期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：1992
卷号：89
期号：18
页码：8671-8675
DOI：10.1073/pnas.89.18.8671
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Auditory outer hair cells can elongate and shorten at acoustic frequencies in response to changes of plasma membrane potential. We show that this fast bidirectional contractile activity consists of an electromechanical transduction process that occurs at the lateral plasma membrane and can be activated and analyzed independently in small membrane patches inside a patch electrode. Bidirectional forces are generated by increases and decreases in membrane area in response to hyperpolarization and depolarization, respectively. We suggest that the force generation mechanism is driven by voltage-dependent conformational changes within a dense array of large transmembrane proteins associated with the site of electromechanical transduction.
