Disabling hearing loss affects hundreds of million of people worldwide, a number expected to increase with life expectancy and noise exposures. This disorder can be caused by congenital or acquired factors, with a clear impact on the quality of life. To date, only hearing aids and cochlear implantations are used as treatments. The hearing organ, the cochlea, is a highly organized structure composed of various types of non-sensory cells ensuring the proper environment for sound processing.
The study of the spatial and temporal expression levels of the genes is indispensable to understand the developmental process and optimize therapeutic procedures to restore cochlear structure and function. Using single-cell spatial transcriptomics, we aim to gain insights in the establishment of cochlear tonotopy and individually decipher the transcriptomic signatures of all cochlear cell-types.
