Despite not being direct homologs, expression and mutant analyses have found that zebrafish gjb8 and human GJB2/GJB6 genes are all involved in inner-ear support cell function and loss of these genes in their respective systems causes deafness (Grifa et al. 1999; Snoeckx et al. 2005; Chang-Chien et al. 2014). Here, GJB2 is linked to deafness.