The Functional Diversity of Epidermal Keratins Revealed by the Partial Rescue of the Keratin 14 Null Phenotype by Keratin 16

September 1999 in “ The journal of cell biology/The Journal of cell biology ”

Rudolph D. Paladini, Pierre A. Coulombe

keratin 14 keratin 16 epidermal keratins alopecia chronic epidermal ulcers K14 K16

Studysummary In this study, expressing human K16 in the epidermis of K14 null mice prevented early skin blistering but led to age-related anomalies, indicating K16 and K14 have distinct roles despite their sequence similarity.

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The study investigated the functional differences between the type I epidermal keratins K14 and K16 by expressing human K16 cDNA in K14 null mice. While K14 null mice typically died shortly after birth due to extensive blistering, those expressing K16 developed normally but later exhibited extensive alopecia, chronic epidermal ulcers, and other anomalies. This indicated that although K16 could rescue the blistering phenotype, it was not functionally equivalent to K14, particularly due to differences in the carboxy-terminal region of approximately 105 amino acids.

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