Dual origin of melanocytes defined by Sox1 expression and their distribution in the skin

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25670092
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: General anatomy (including histology/embryology)
• Research Institution: Gifu University
• Principal Investigator: Kunisada Takahiro 岐阜大学, 医学(系)研究科(研究院), 教授 (30205108)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 神経堤細胞 / 色素細胞 / 細胞系譜 / Ｓｏｘ１ / Ｋｉｔ

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Melanocytes are pigment-producing cells generated from neural crest cells (NCCs) that delaminate from the dorsal neural tube. We used transgenic mice expressing Cre recombinase under control of the Sox1 promoter crossed to the Rosa26-YFP reporter strain that contains a floxed stop cassette preventing YFP expression until the Cre-induced deletion (Sox1-Cre/+; Rosa26R-YFP/+ mice), we noticed that melanocytes were derived differently from Sox1-Cre+ and from Sox1-Cre－ populations in Sox1-Cre/YFP embryos. We showed that a significant population of melanocytes in the skin of mice are derived from trunk NCCs that originated from the non-neuroepithelium. We also observed a clear segregation of these two types of melanocytes in adult mouse skin suggesting a competitive acquisition of their stem cell niche.

Free Research Field

発生生物学