The research objective of this award is to understand the physical mechanisms that will enable biomolecular materials to mimic the mechanosensitive response properties of animal auditory systems. This research will build on significant advances in the understanding of hair cell physiology for the purpose of elucidating how these response properties can be mimicked in a biomolecular material. The approach will be to study the underlying physical mechanisms of mechanotransduction in membrane-based artificial hair cells for the purpose of understanding how the underlying mechanisms control the sensitivity and frequency selectivity of the material system; construct new methods to fabricate arrays of biomolecular materials for use in arrays that contain a large number of artificial hair cell structures, and; conduct systematic experiments on an array of membrane-based artificial hair cells and study both the individual and collective responses of the material system.
If successful, the benefits of this research will include a fuller understanding of the mechanosensitive transduction properties of both natural and artificial hair cells for the long-term purpose of improving methods of treating disorders associated with hearing loss. Approximately 36 million American adults (about 17 percent) report some degree of hearing loss, and age-related hearing loss affects 18 percent of adults between the ages of 45 and 64 and 47 percent of adults 75 or older. Knowledge will be disseminated through graduate-level research as well as undergraduate educational programs. The undergraduate programs will benefit from the introduction of a three-year educational project that focuses on physiological modeling of the human auditory system, characterization of artificial systems excited by physiological inputs, and a fundamental understanding of how ion channel-based material systems can mimic the properties of human auditory systems.
