A paradigm for tympanic epithelial dispersion.
It is more than a century since tympanic epithelial dispersion was first noted. This concept has not been analyzed mechanically until now. Serial photography of a circular disc holding 530 2.5 mm diameter ball-bearings, some of which were painted black to represent ink dots, has shown the centrifugal movement, enlargement and fragmentation of these marked areas when ball-bearings are added at random into the monolayer. Ink dots applied to mammalian drumheads move in a similar fashion. The model not only represented all the known tympanic epithelial phenomena faithfully, but could also be used to predict a mitotic index for the human drum. The index derived is consistent with normal human forearm skin if the dispersion of the corneocytes is due to the final shape change and insertion of lower epithelial cells into the lowest corneocyte layer.
D002465:Cell Movement; D000078404:Epidermal Cells; D004848:Epithelium / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008953:Models, Anatomic; D014432:Tympanic Membrane / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*