Fig. 1

All confocal images are of live, anesthetized larvae. (A) Hair cells in the lateral-line neuromasts (7 dpf) and inner ear cristae (5 dpf) from wild type and tmie^ru1000 larvae. A transgene (Actin-GFP) was used to visualize stereocilia bundles. (B) Sample traces from an auditory evoked behavior response (AEBR) assay, performed on 6 dpf larvae over the course of 3 minutes. Pure tone stimuli are indicated by asterisks. Peaks represent pixel changes due to larval movements (magenta indicates positive response). (C) Quantification of AEBR displayed as box-and-whiskers plot; significance determined by two-tailed unpaired t-test with Welch’s correction. (D) Top-down view of neuromasts from 4 dpf larvae after brief exposure to a vital dye, FM 1–43. FM 1–43 and FM4-64 permeate open transduction channels. (E) Lateral view of a neuromast from a 4 dpf tmie^ru1000larva expressing transgenic Tmie-GFP, after exposure to FM 4–64. (F) Quantification of FM 4–64 fluorescence/cell in 5 dpf larvae; significance determined by one-way ANOVA. (G) A cartoon depiction of a group of lateral-line hair cells viewed laterally, with close-up views of a single cell at the bundle region. The dashed green line indicates the single plane containing the stereocilia bundles. The magenta bracket indicates the area used to make the maximum projections that were analyzed for FM fluorescence in (F). (H) Sample traces of extracellular (microphonic) recordings, evoked from the inner ear of 3 dpf larvae. A piezo actuator was used to stimulate larvae with a 200 Hz sine-wave mechanical stimulus using an 8 V driver voltage. All statistics are mean ± SD, ****p < 0.0001. Scale bars are 10μm.