LAUSR

Hereditary hearing impairment is a clinically and genetically heterogeneous disease. Whole‐exome sequencing was performed on seven affected and six unaffected members in a large Chinese family with autosomal‐dominant nonsyndromic hearing loss. The pathogenic variant of the gene encoding human topoisomerase IIβ TOP2B (c.G4837C:p.D1613H) was cosegregated with hearing loss in this pedigree and another two variants of TOP2B were detected in 66 sporadic patients with hearing loss. top2b knockdown led to significant defects in zebrafish inner ears and caused downregulation of akt which resulted in inactivation of PI3K‐Akt signalling. As a result, supporting cell and hair cell numbers were reduced through inhibition of the PI3K‐Akt pathway. Therefore, we hypothesized that mutations in TOP2B can cause autosomal‐dominant nonsyndromic hearing impairment through inhibition of the PI3K‐Akt signalling pathway.