espin

Can't help you this time. I would suspect that these terms form parts of a scientific vocabulary which has not yet risen above the horizon of lexicographers, and so is not yet included in dictionaries. The author refers to them as proteins, so you might want to go on-line and look for a bio-chemical dictionary.

Oristar- Looked in a medical dictionary, and it's not there. Are you sure that you have it spelled correctly?

Espin is a type of stem cell found in the inner ear. This is getting into very specific biological vocabulary and stem cell research is still in it's infancy so it'll probably be a few years before the term even starts showing up in things like medical dictionaries.

Hi All.

@fishin': Espin seems not stem cell itself. It is perhaps an element of stem cell found in the mouse inner ear, because the context has indicated that espin is protein, not cell; and in addition also because of the writer has told us that the espin is found in the mechanosensitive bundle that protrudes from the apical surface of the hair cell. So it is no doubt that espin is not a type of stem cell.

@Setanta: I've ever searched on-line like hell and just got confused by the word.
@Phoenix: I always have a medical dictionary in hand! And the explanation for this word is EMPTY!

Finally, thank you all for replying.

espin

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9763424