HGF and deafness: In addition, we identified potentially novel deafness-associated genes Mpzl2 in IMCs and Tbx1 in MCs along with the known deafness-associated genes in IMCs (Kcnj10, Met, Mitf, Gjb6, Ednrb, and Gjb2 [48, 51–57]) and in MCs (Kcnq1, Esrrb, Kcne1, Lrp2, Slc22a4, and Hgf [51, 52, 58–63]).