Epidermal corneocytes: dead guards of the hidden treasure

TL;DR

This review discusses the molecular and cellular changes during epidermal stem cell differentiation into corneocytes, highlighting transcription factors and gene regulation mechanisms crucial for skin cell development and potential therapeutic insights.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the molecular events and transcriptional regulation involved in epidermal differentiation, emphasizing chromatin modifications and gene expression.

Findings

Identification of key transcription factors in differentiation

Role of chromatin modification in cell maturation

Insights into epidermal cell signaling mechanisms

Abstract

Gradual transformation of the epidermal stem cells to corneocytes involves a chain of chronologically well-arranged events that mostly stimulated locally by their neighbors. Cell diversity that observed during the differentiation through the different epidermal cell layers included the consisted changes of cell shape, intercellular contacts and proliferation. However, the most dramatically these changes appeared at the molecular level through gene expression, catalysis and intraprotein interactions. The proposed review explains these changes by switching systemic transcription factors that unlike their counterparts those role is limited to a contribution to gene expression also prepare cells to the next step of differentiation via modification of the chromatin pattern . Since primary epidermal keratinocytes are one of the most easy available type of the stem cells, a better understanding of the epidermal differentiation will benefit the research in the other areas by a discovery of basic coordinating mechanisms that stand behind such distinct molecular events as cell signaling and gene expression, and formulate basic principles for a smart therapeutic correction of the metabolism.