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. 2014 Sep 29;9(9):e108160. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0108160

Figure 1. Activation of Notch in differentiating hair cells causes profound deafness.

Figure 1

A. Schematic diagram demonstrating constructs for NICD expression in hair cells. (1) Cre is expressed in early developing hair cells under the Gfi1 promoter, causing recombination of a floxed-stop cassette and expression of NICD (2). The cross also contains a ROSA26-lacZ allele, which is similarly recombined upon expression of Cre and marks by lineage the cells expressing NICD (3). B–C. Hearing assessments of Gfi1-NICD mutants and their littermate Cre-negative controls at 5weeks of age. B. Auditory brainstem recordings (ABRs) show that Gfi1-NICD mutants have no responses to the highest sounds levels (80 dB SPL). C. Measurements of distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) also show raised thresholds, but have some responses to sound. To determine significance, a 2-way ANOVA was performed, with pairwise comparisons to determine significance for each frequency, * = p<0.001.