TLDR Hair follicles and urine cell pellets are promising for transcriptome studies due to consistent quality and useful expression profiles.
This study evaluated noninvasive biospecimens for transcriptome studies, focusing on buccal swabs, hair follicles, saliva, and urine cell pellets collected from 19 individuals over multiple timepoints, resulting in 300 unique samples and 472 transcriptomes. Hair follicles and urine cell pellets were identified as the most promising due to their consistent sample quality and relevant expression profiles. The research demonstrated the feasibility of using noninvasive tissues in various transcriptomic applications, suggesting that these biospecimens could enhance disease-relevant discoveries and clinical applications by enabling more complex study designs and increasing sample sizes.
42 citations
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February 2021 in “Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy” Hair follicle regeneration possible, more research needed.
4 citations
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November 2020 in “BMC Dermatology” Researchers identified genes in scalp hair follicles that may affect hair traits and hair loss.
86 citations
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July 2020 in “International Journal of Molecular Sciences” Activating the Wnt/β-catenin pathway could lead to new hair loss treatments.
2 citations
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May 2023 in “International Journal of Molecular Sciences” Gene expression in hair follicles can help diagnose methamphetamine use disorder.
January 2021 in “bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)” Mothers have more hair proteins than their children, with age-related differences in protein patterns, and some proteins in hair could indicate early childhood development.
5 citations
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January 2023 in “International Journal of Molecular Sciences” Hair follicles could be used to noninvasively monitor our body's internal clock and help identify risks for related diseases.
January 2024 in “Biochemical genetics” The research found specific genes and proteins that affect how fast chickens' feathers grow, which is not solely determined by traditional inheritance patterns.
October 2023 in “bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)” Hair follicles can be kept in RNAlater® at cool or room temperature for a week without harming RNA quality.
