Fig. 6

Disrupted structure of cuticular plate after TMEM30A knockout. a, b Regular alignment of cuticular plate on IHCs and OHCs in WT. A small hole (arrow) on the specific top center of the cuticular plate of each OHC indicates the location of kinocilium. c–i Disordered cuticular plates. Cuticular plate layers present with dense spectrin-α staining (arrow head) or irregular kinocilia “hole” location, which indicates disturbed cell polarity in TMEM30A KO mice. It is more severe in the apical turn than in the basal turn. From the enlarged view, we can see the randomly distributed holes on IHCs (i). j Quantitative analysis of HCs with regular polarity suggested a more severe disruption in apical turn at P7 for both IHCs and OHCs. Red spectrin-α, blue DAPI. Error bars indicate the standard error of the mean. Scale bar in h, 10 μm (for a–h). Scale bar in i, 5 μm (for i). We analyzed the differences of the percentage of HCs with regular polarity between WT and KO groups. ***p < 0.001. N = 3