Editor's Summary

17 January 2008

Hair regeneration

Fur-coated mammals could teach us important lessons about the control of stem cell replication: their skins contain thousands of hair follicles that cycle between growth and rest phases, and somehow all the individual follicle stem cells are programmed to coordinate cell divisions. Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) and their inhibitors have now been identified as central to the control of waves of hair follicle activity. In mice regenerating hair after a close shave, variations in BMP2 and BMP4 production both regulate hair growth in individual follicles and coordinate it with nearby follicles. This pair of signalling molecules also fits the description of chalone, a hypothetical molecule introduced 50 years ago to explain patterned hair growth. This work has implications for carcinogenesis and stem-cell engineering studies, many of which assume that mouse skin stays homogeneous during lengthy experiments.

Letter: Cyclic dermal BMP signalling regulates stem cell activation during hair regeneration

Maksim V. Plikus, Julie Ann Mayer, Damon de la Cruz, Ruth E. Baker, Philip K. Maini, Robert Maxson & Cheng-Ming Chuong

doi:10.1038/nature06457

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