1.A.9.1.22
Alpha9/alpha10 (α9α10) neuronal acetylcholine receptor with the two subunits of 450 aas (α9; Chrna9 or NACHRA9) and 479 aas (α10; Chrna10 or NACHRA10). It is an ionotropic receptor with a probable role in the modulation of auditory stimuli. Agonist binding induces a conformation change that leads to the opening of an ion-conducting channel across the plasma membrane (Sgard et al. 2002, Zouridakis et al. 2014). The channel is permeable to a range of divalent cations including calcium, the influx of which may activate a potassium current which hyperpolarizes the cell membrane (Zouridakis et al. 2014). In the ear, this may lead to a reduction in basilar membrane motion, altering the activity of auditory nerve fibers and reducing the range of dynamic hearing. This may protect against acoustic trauma, and may also regulate keratinocyte adhesion (Nguyen et al. 2000). Hair cell alpha9alpha10 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor functional expression is regulated by ligand binding and deafness gene products (Gu et al. 2020). Auditory hair cells receive olivocochlear efferent innervation, which refines tonotopic mapping, improves sound discrimination, and mitigates acoustic trauma. The olivocochlear synapse involves α9α10nAChRs which assemble in hair cells only coincident with cholinergic innervation and do not express in recombinant mammalian cell lines. Genome-wide screening determined that assembly and surface expression of α9α10 require ligand binding. Ion channel function additionally demands an auxiliary subunit, which can be transmembrane inner ear (TMIE) or TMEM132e. Both of these single-pass transmembrane proteins are enriched in hair cells and underlie nonsyndromic human deafness. Inner hair cells from TMIE mutant mice show altered postsynaptic α9α10 function and retain α9α10-mediated transmission beyond the second postnatal week associated with abnormally persistent cholinergic innervation. Thus, the mechanism links cholinergic input with α9α10 assembly, identifies functions for human deafness genes TMIE/TMEM132e, and enables drug discovery for this elusive nAChR implicated in prevalent auditory disorders (Gu et al. 2020).  Point mutations in the nicotinic receptor alpha1 subunit can be responsible for slow-channel myasthenia (Kudryavtsev et al. 2021).