Skin stem cells in morphogenesis and cancer
The skin epithelium offers an excellent system to understand how stem cells balance self-renewal and differentiation in normal tissue generation and how this process goes awry in cancer. We focus on how extrinsic and intrinsic signals trigger the transcriptional cascade of changes in skin stem cells that activate polarized cellular remodeling necessary for tissue development. In so doing, we've gained new insights into stem cell behavior and unraveled mechanisms that are deregulated in a variety of human cancers.
Keywords
Stem cells / skin / tissue morphogenesis / transcriptional balancing in growth & development / cytoskeletal dynamics