Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-12-2020

Keywords

JMG

JAX Source

NPJ Regen Med 2020 Jun 12; 5(1):13.

Volume

5

Issue

1

First Page

13

Last Page

13

ISSN

2057-3995

PMID

33580010

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41536-020-0098-z

Grant

HD042454, CA034196, GM103423

Abstract

Glial-cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is a well-studied neuroregenerative factor; however, the degree to which it supports hair formation and skin wound repair is not known. By using a Gfra1 (GDNF family receptor alpha 1) knock-in reporter mouse line, GDNF signaling was found to occur within hair bulge stem cells (BSCs) during the initiation of the hair cycle and early stages of hair formation after depilation. Both recombinant and transgene overexpression of GDNF promoted BSC colony growth, hair formation, and skin repair after wounding through enhanced self-renewal of BSCs and commitment of BSC-derived progenitors into becoming epidermal cells at the injury site. Conditional ablation of Gfra1 among BSCs impaired the onset of the hair cycle, while conditional ablation of the GDNF family member signal transducer, Ret, within BSCs prevented the onset of the hair cycle and depilation-induced anagen development of hair follicles. Our findings reveal that GDNF promotes hair formation and wound repair and that bulge stem cells are critical mediators of both.

Comments

We would like to thank Dr. Christopher McCarty (Jackson Laboratory) and Alicia Valenzuela (Jackson Laboratory) for excellent technical support and review of the manuscript.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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