Role of Mitochondria in keratinization

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K15545
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Dermatology
• Research Institution: Niigata University
• Principal Investigator: Abe Riichiro 新潟大学, 医歯学系, 教授 (60344511)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ミトコンドリア / 角化

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Mitochondria exert a central function in various cellular responses such as apoptosis. Mitochondria also actively fuses and divides, and changes its morphology. On the other hand, the involvement of mitochondria in keratinization is unknown.
Expression was observed only in the basal layer of Mfn2, a fusion-related protein, Mfn1 was expressed only in the spinous layer, and it was revealed that it binds to specific keratin. We succeeded in producing epidermis-specific conditional knockout mice of Mfn1 and Mfn2, respectively. It became clear that mitochondria is closely associated with keratinization through binding to keratin.

Free Research Field

皮膚科学