{"doi":"10.1101/2020.08.24.265231","title":"Lamellar cells in Pacinian and Meissner corpuscles are touch sensors","abstract":"Abstract The skin covering the human palm and other specialized tactile organs contains a high density of mechanosensory corpuscles tuned to detect transient pressure and vibration. These corpuscles comprise a sensory afferent neuron surrounded by lamellar cells 1-3 . The neuronal afferent is thought to be the mechanical sensor within the corpuscle, whereas the function of lamellar cells is unknown 2,4,5 . Here we show that lamellar cells within Meissner and Pacinian corpuscles detect tactile stimuli. We develop a preparation of bill skin from tactile-specialist ducks that permits electrophysiological recordings from lamellar cells and demonstrate that they contain mechanically-gated ion channels. We also show that lamellar cells from Meissner corpuscles generate mechanically-evoked action potentials using R-type voltage-gated calcium channels. These findings provide the first evidence for R-type channel-dependent action potentials in non-neuronal cells and demonstrate that lamellar cells are active detectors of touch. We propose that Meissner and Pacinian corpuscles use both neuronal and non-neuronal mechanoreception to detect mechanical signals.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":122261,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9578,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":312014,"name":"Viktor V. Feketa","orcid":"0000-0003-4978-0581","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":312015,"name":"Evan O. Anderson","orcid":"0000-0001-6486-1318","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":312017,"name":"Elena O. Gracheva","orcid":"0000-0002-0846-3427","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":312018,"name":"Sviatoslav N. Bagriantsev","orcid":"0000-0002-6661-3403","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":313171,"name":"Yury A. Nikolaev","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:51.076430Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}