A novel theoretical framework reveals more than one voltage-sensing pathway in the lateral membrane of outer hair cells.

Outer hair cell (OHC) electromotility amplifies acoustic vibrations throughout the frequency range of hearing. Electromotility requires that the lateral membrane protein prestin undergo a conformational change upon changes in the membrane potential to produce an associated displacement charge. The magnitude of the charge displaced and the mid-reaction potential (when one half of the charge is displaced) reflects whether the cells will produce sufficient gain at the resting membrane potential to boost sound in vivo.

RNAdemocracy: an ensemble method for RNA secondary structure prediction using consensus scoring.

The identification of RNA secondary structure has been an important tool for the characterization of nucleic acids. Computational structure prediction has been an effective approach toward this end, but improvement of established methods is often slow and reliant on redundant methodology. Here we present a novel consensus scoring approach, created to incorporate inputs from an array of established methods with the goal of producing outputs that contain mutual structures from these programs.