Falsification of the ionic channel theory of hair cell transduction

Commun Integr Biol. 2013 Nov 1;6(6):e26763. doi: 10.4161/cib.26763. Epub 2013 Nov 13.

Abstract

The hair cell provides the transduction of mechanical vibrations in the balance and acoustic sense of all vertebrates that swim, walk, or fly. The current theory places hair cell transduction in a mechanically controlled ion channel. Although the theory of a mechanical input modulating the flow of ions through an ion pore has been a useful tool, it is falsified by experimental data in the literature and can be definitively falsified by a proposed experiment.

Keywords: Nernst equation; hair cell; ion channel; transduction.