Faculty Opinions Recommendation of Nonviral In Situ Green Fluorescent Protein Labeling and Culture of Primary, Adult Human Hair Follicle Epithelial Progenitor Cells
October 2009
in “
Faculty Opinions – Post-Publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature
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TLDR Researchers developed a method to label and study human hair follicle stem cells using a fluorescent protein.
The study by Tiede et al. established a non-viral method for labeling human hair follicle stem/progenitor cells with green fluorescent protein (GFP) using the human keratin 15 (K15) promoter. This technique allowed for the characterization and manipulation of human epithelial stem cells both in situ and in vitro. The researchers successfully isolated and characterized GFP-labeled human bulge cells, which expressed known markers like CD200 and beta1 integrins. The study found that K15-GFP+ bulge cells were highly proliferative and could form holoclones in culture. Interestingly, the expression of CD200, a bulge cell marker, was downregulated upon isolation but upregulated in culture, suggesting a selection of a CD200-high subpopulation. This non-viral approach was deemed advantageous for epithelial stem cell research and potentially applicable to other human tissues.
