Introduction Calcium carbonate biominerals participate in diverse physiological functions.
Despite intensive studies, little is known about how mineralization is initiated in organisms …

Zebrafish inner ear development is characterized by the crystallization of otoliths onto
immotile kinocilia that protrude from sensory “hair” cells. The stereotypical formation of these …

Zebrafish has become an excellent model for studying the development and function of
inner ear. We report here a zebrafish line in which claudin 7b (cldn7b) locus is interrupted by …

Left-right patterning and asymmetric morphogenesis arise from a complex set of molecular
and cellular interactions that are particularly dynamic and associated with mechanical …

Expressions of the Growth arrest specific 8 (GAS8) and its naturally occurring anti-sense
RNA (GAS8-AS1) have been assessed in tumoral tissues of different origins. However, their …

Stimulus dependence is a general feature of developing animal sensory systems. In this
respect, it has extensively been shown earlier that fish inner ear otoliths can act as test …

Nobel Laureate von Békésy first presented traveling wave theory, which explains the
vibration mechanism of the basilar membrane (BM) of cochlea in 1960, and thus the …

The cellular microenvironment–which includes the cells, extracellular matrix (ECM), and
local transport processes–affects the cell which in turn responds by synthetic or degradative …

Cilia and flagella are evolutionarily conserved organelles that form protrusions on the
surface of many growth-arrested or differentiated eukaryotic cells. Due to the structural and …

Embryonic development involves the cellular integration of chemical and physical stimuli. A
key physical input is the mechanical stress generated during embryonic morphogenesis …