Isolation of cochlear inner hair cells.

In order to identify hair cell specific genes, it is essential to obtain isolated hair cells in quantity. While whole-cell recordings have been made from isolated inner hair cells (IHCs) from guinea pigs, detailed methods for obtaining a fairly large amount of isolated inner hair cells have not been published. Here we describe a protocol that can yield a fairly large amount of isolated gerbil IHCs. This technique can provide sufficient numbers of solitary IHCs for either electrophysiological studies of the cell's membrane properties or identifying genes related to IHC functions using techniques of molecular biology.