Functional Analysis of Vitelline Membrane Outer Layer 1 (VMO1)

Abstract

Hearing loss is an auditory impairment affecting millions of people world-wide. It has considerable impact psychologically, socially, and physically in adults; with the affected numbers increasing with age, and those with learning disabilities are at a particular risk. With the current advancements in audiological technologies and research related to regeneration of inner ear cells, it is important to understand hearing loss at a molecular level and the proteins involved in the mechanism. Because of the many complications involved in isolating genes from the actual human ear, the use of animal/bacterial models and commercial mammalian cell lines have become important and informative. In addition, bioinformatics analysis makes it possible to converge the similarities between the human genome and genes from other species in real time. This aids in screening the genetic causes which underlie hearing loss and improve our understanding to unravel diagnostic strategies. The Vitelline Membrane Outer Layer 1 homolog (Vmo1) gene is of particular interest as it was uniquely and highly expressed in the inner ear of mouse. The function of this gene is currently unknown. The aim of this research is to induce recombinant human VMO1 protein in a prokaryotic system (E. coli) and ascertain its expression using a range of molecular and cellular assays. To do so, this research focuses on four objectives.