title: Epithelial Skin Biology: Three Decades of Developmental Biology, a Hundred Questions Answered and a Thousand New Ones to Address.
abstract: The mammalian skin epidermis and its hair and sweat gland appendages provide a protective barrier that retains essential body fluids, guards against invasion by harmful microbes, and regulates body temperature through the ability to sweat. At the interface between the external environment and the body, skin is constantly subjected to physical trauma and must also be primed to repair wounds in response to injury. In adults, the skin maintains epidermal homeostasis, hair regeneration, and wound repair through the use of its stem cells. This essay focuses on when stem cells become established during skin development and where these cells reside in adult epithelial tissues of the skin. I explore how skin stem cells maintain tissue homeostasis and repair wounds and how they regulate the delicate balance between proliferation and differentiation. Finally, I tackle the relation between skin cancer and mutations that perturb the regulation of stem cells.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Mammalian Development and Cell Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, New York, USA. Electronic address: fuchslb@rockefeller.edu.
authors.forename: Elaine
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fuchs
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000078404:Epidermal Cells; D004817:Epidermis / Q000502:physiology*; D004847:Epithelial Cells; D018859:Hair Follicle / Q000166:cytology*; D006801:Humans; D008322:Mammals; D012867:Skin / Q000166:cytology* / Q000196:embryology*; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology; D013545:Sweat Glands / Q000166:cytology
keywords: Cancer; Epithelial; Hair follicle; Skin development; Stem cell; Stem cell niche; Sweat gland; Transcriptional regulation; WNT signaling