UT Dallas lab finds a missing gene brought early hearing loss to female mice but spared males

A University of Texas at Dallas researcher studying why hearing loss affects men and women differently reports that switching off a single gene in mice caused early hearing loss in females while males kept their hearing.

Dr. Bohua Hu, a professor of speech, language and hearing in the university's School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, described the findings in the September issue of the journal Hearing Research, UT Dallas said Wednesday. Hu directs the Inner Ear Research Lab in the Texas Instruments Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Building on the Richardson campus.

What the mice showed

The team worked with mice bred without the gene Slc16a5, which carries instructions for a protein called monocarboxylate transporter 6, or Mct6. Researchers tracked how cells in the cochlea, the hearing organ of the inner ear, handled metabolism without it.

Female mice lacking the protein developed hearing loss by 6 weeks of age and lost the sensory hair cells that turn sound into electrical signals, Hu said in the university's account. Males kept their hearing and their hair cells at 12 weeks.

When the researchers cataloged the genetic activity in the cells, they found that the expression of genes that respond to estrogen had shifted in mice missing the protein. "Though the stress response was the same for both, molecular activity downstream differed," Hu said.

A finding they were not looking for

The project began as a test of whether removing the gene could protect against hearing loss caused by medications, an idea from Hu's co-authors at the University at Buffalo, he said. "During this study, however, we noticed that males and females show different responses to drug-induced hearing loss. We later discovered that even without the drugs, the sex-based difference exists."

Hu said hearing loss can come from noise, medications or aging, and that hair cells in the inner ear do not grow back once lost. He said men are more susceptible to noise injury in middle age, while women catch up at older ages, and that the two differ in how ear cells produce energy.

His team next plans to study how sex hormone receptors shape the response to noise injury and how differences in cellular energy production affect damaged cochlear cells.

Hu joined UT Dallas in 2025 after 25 years as a professor at the University at Buffalo, where he earned his doctorate. UT Dallas doctoral student Mengxiao Ye also worked on the study, which was supported in part by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Sources

news.utdallas.edu