Evidence for Mechanosensitive Channel Activity of Tentonin 3/TMEM150C

Mechanosensation is essential for various physiological processes, and it is mediated by mechanotransduction channels. Recently, we reported that TMEM150C/Tentonin 3 (TTN3) confers mechanically activated currents with slow inactivation kinetics in several cell types, including dorsal root ganglion neurons (Hong et al., 2016). The accompanying Matters Arising by Dubin, Murthy, and colleagues confirms that naive heterologous cells demonstrate a mechanically activated current, but finds that this response is absent in CRISPR-Cas9 Piezo1 knockout cell lines and suggests that TTN3 is a modulator of Piezo1. We present and discuss evidence based on co-expression of TTN3 and Peizo1 and mutant variants of the pore region of TTN3 to support that TTN3 is a pore-forming unit, not an amplifying adaptor for Piezo1 activity. This Matters Arising Response paper, along with Zhao et al. (2017), addresses the Matters Arising from Dubin et al. (2017), published concurrently in this issue of Neuron.