Hairless Controls Hair Fate Decision via Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling

    Kuicheng Zhu, Chi Xu, Mengduan Liu, Jintao Zhang
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    TLDR The Hairless gene is crucial for hair cell development, affecting whether skin cells become hair or skin and oil gland cells.
    The study demonstrated that the Hairless (Hr) gene is essential for the differentiation of progenitor keratinocytes into hair keratinocytes via the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. In the absence of the Hr gene, these progenitor cells were found to differentiate into epidermal and sebaceous gland cells instead, indicating a disruption in normal hair follicle development. The research, which included skin samples from 12-day-old mutant mice (n = 3), suggests that the Hr gene's regulation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling is critical for hair follicle fate determination. This has potential implications for understanding and treating hair loss disorders such as androgenetic alopecia (AGA) and alopecia areata (AA). The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
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