Defining the mechanisms of skin epidermal stratification during development

• Applicant: Dr. Hisham Bazzi, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Developmental Biology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497900755

How complex stratified epithelial barriers that are essential for animal survival, such as the skin epidermis, are generated during mammalian development is still an open question. The prevailing model is that the simple epithelial progenitors shift their cell division orientation and undergo perpendicular asymmetric cell divisions to allow differentiation and stratification while preserving the proliferative basal pool. In addition to literature in the adult epidermis, we have shown that the processes of cell division orientation and skin epidermal differentiation during development can be uncoupled. Our data suggest that high proliferation rates and a sudden increase in cell number that are faster than tissue growth can accommodate them, as well as cellular delamination can account for epidermal stratification and differentiation. In this application, we propose to use mouse genetic approaches, cell fate reporters and time-lapse imaging of the early developing mouse skin epidermis to precisely define the basal to suprabasal cell fate transitions and the signalling pathways driving them.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants