Recent advances in efforts to identify compounds that modulate cellular responses to conditions that impact the survival of inner ear hair cells have revolutionized the search for drugs that provide robust protection or facilitate regeneration.
This effort has been facilitated through the use of zebrafish as an experimental platform that has become increasingly used in the study of hearing and vestibular function [11, 12].
In addition to hair cells in the inner ear, zebrafish possess hair cells clustered in structures called neuromasts along the surface of their head and body (Fig. 1) [13].