AsianScientist (Dec. 6, 2016) – Researchers in Japan and the UK have shown how skin maintains a barrier, even when it is shedding old cells. Their work was published in eLife.
Humans lose 200,000,000 skin cells every hour, and it has been a challenge for scientists to explain how this colossal shedding process can occur without there being a break in the skin barrier.
In this study, a team from Keio University in Japan, working with a researcher at Imperial College London, discovered that the shape of epidermal cells and their ability to temporarily glue together may explain how they form a secondary barrier deeper below the surface in the epidermis.
The researchers suggest that a shape of an epidermal cell is actually a flattened version of a tetrakaidecahedron—a 14-sided, 3D solid made out of six rectangular and eight hexagonal sides. The tetrakaidecahedron shape was first proposed in 1887 by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), a Scotch-Irish mathematical physicist and engineer, who claimed that the tetrakaidecahedron was the best shape for packing equal-sized objects together to fill space with minimal surface area.
The team also discovered that these cells manufacture proteins, which act as a temporary glue that binds the cells together in what are called ‘tight junctions.’ The combination of the cells’ geometry and tight junction formation means that the skin barrier can maintain its integrity, even though it is very thin.
Their research suggests that ‘malfunctions’ in the production of the tight junctions may be a contributing factor that explains why some people have conditions such as eczema, where the skin barrier is weakened, leading to bacterial infiltration, inflammation, scratching and further infection.
The article can be found at: Yokouchi et al. (2016) Epidermal Cell Turnover Across Tight Junctions Based on Kelvin’s Tetrakaidecahedron Cell Shape.
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Source: Imperial College London; Photo: Shutterstock.
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