The morphological structure of Jinlo (or Meridian)--a hypothesis of sympathetic sensitive lines along skin is studied. At first, sympathetic substance lines(SSL) are displayed by macro autoradiography with 125 I tyros...The morphological structure of Jinlo (or Meridian)--a hypothesis of sympathetic sensitive lines along skin is studied. At first, sympathetic substance lines(SSL) are displayed by macro autoradiography with 125 I tyrosine tracer. The lines are continuous from head to feet, symmetric in the left and right and connect each other in the head and feet to form loops. When the upper back skin where the SSL passed is severed, the effect of acupuncture analgesia produced by stimulating acupoints in the hindlimb is blocked significantly. Moreover, the SSL are proved coming from the dense adrenergic nerve endings innervating arrector pili muscles observed by fluorescent microscopy. As a conclusion, the hair follicles and its arrector pili muscles along the SSL are the morphological structure of Jinlo and act as dynamic target organs for long distance transmission of messages. Secondly, the rats hair are sheared as 12～16 rings from head to leg. Acupuncture and injection of phenylephrine at back skin along SSL produce pilomotor lines from hip to cheek, which is identical with SSL. Finally, after shaving all rat hairs, the first wave of hair growth distributes along lines and loops, which is identical with SSL. Thus live animal model is moken for displaying the Jinlo lines along rat skin.展开更多
In the bulge region of the hair follicle, a densely and concentrically packed cell mass is encircled by the arrector pili muscle (APM), which offers a specilized microenvironment (niche) for housing heterogeneous adul...In the bulge region of the hair follicle, a densely and concentrically packed cell mass is encircled by the arrector pili muscle (APM), which offers a specilized microenvironment (niche) for housing heterogeneous adult stem cells. However, the detailed histological architecture and the cellular composition of the bulge region warrants intensive study and may have implications for the regulation of hair follicle growth regulation. This study was designed to define the gene-expression pro-files of putative stem cells and lineage-specific precursors in the mid-portions of plucked hair follicles prepared according to the presence of detectable autofluorescence. The structure was also characterized by using a consecutive sectioning technique. The bulge region of the hair follicle with autofluorescence was precisely excised by employing a micro-dissection procedure. Semi-quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed to identify the gene expression profiles specific for epithelial, melanocyte and stromal stem cells in the bulge region of the hair follicle visualized by autofluorescence. The morphology and its age-dependent changes of bulge region of the hair follicles with autofluorescence segment were also examined in 9 scalp skin specimens collected from patients aged 30 weeks to 75 years, by serial sectioning and immuno-staining. Gene expression profile analysis revealed that there were cells with mRNA transcripts of DctHiTyraseLo-Tyrp1LoMC1RLoMITFLo/K15Hi/NPNTHi in the bulge region of the hair follicle with autofluorescence segments, which differed from the patterns in hair bulbs. Small cell-protrusions that sprouted from the outer root sheath (ORS) were clearly observed at the APM inserting level in serial sections of hair follicles by immunohistological staining, which were characteristically replete with K15+/K19+expressing cells. Likewise, the muscle bundles of APM positive for smooth muscle actin intimately encircled these cell-protrusions, and the occurrence frequency of the cell-protrusions was increased in fetal scalp skin compared with adult scalp skin. This study provided the evidence that the cell-protrusions occurring at the ORS relative to the APM insertion are more likely to be characteristic of the visible niches that are filled with abundant stem cells. The occurrence frequency of these cell-protrusions was significantly increased in fetal scalp skin samples (128%) as compared with the scalp skins of younger (49.4%) and older (25.4%) adults (P<0.01), but difference in the frequency between the two adult groups were not significant. These results indicated that these cell-protrusions function as a niche house for the myriad stem cells and/or precursors to meet the needs of the development of hair follicles in an embryo. The micro-dissection used in this study was simple and reliable in excising the bulge region of the hair follicle with autofluorescence segments dependent on their autofluorescence is of value for the study of stem cell culture.展开更多
文摘The morphological structure of Jinlo (or Meridian)--a hypothesis of sympathetic sensitive lines along skin is studied. At first, sympathetic substance lines(SSL) are displayed by macro autoradiography with 125 I tyrosine tracer. The lines are continuous from head to feet, symmetric in the left and right and connect each other in the head and feet to form loops. When the upper back skin where the SSL passed is severed, the effect of acupuncture analgesia produced by stimulating acupoints in the hindlimb is blocked significantly. Moreover, the SSL are proved coming from the dense adrenergic nerve endings innervating arrector pili muscles observed by fluorescent microscopy. As a conclusion, the hair follicles and its arrector pili muscles along the SSL are the morphological structure of Jinlo and act as dynamic target organs for long distance transmission of messages. Secondly, the rats hair are sheared as 12～16 rings from head to leg. Acupuncture and injection of phenylephrine at back skin along SSL produce pilomotor lines from hip to cheek, which is identical with SSL. Finally, after shaving all rat hairs, the first wave of hair growth distributes along lines and loops, which is identical with SSL. Thus live animal model is moken for displaying the Jinlo lines along rat skin.
基金supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 8107138)a CMA-LOreal China Hair Grant (No. H2010040414)
文摘In the bulge region of the hair follicle, a densely and concentrically packed cell mass is encircled by the arrector pili muscle (APM), which offers a specilized microenvironment (niche) for housing heterogeneous adult stem cells. However, the detailed histological architecture and the cellular composition of the bulge region warrants intensive study and may have implications for the regulation of hair follicle growth regulation. This study was designed to define the gene-expression pro-files of putative stem cells and lineage-specific precursors in the mid-portions of plucked hair follicles prepared according to the presence of detectable autofluorescence. The structure was also characterized by using a consecutive sectioning technique. The bulge region of the hair follicle with autofluorescence was precisely excised by employing a micro-dissection procedure. Semi-quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed to identify the gene expression profiles specific for epithelial, melanocyte and stromal stem cells in the bulge region of the hair follicle visualized by autofluorescence. The morphology and its age-dependent changes of bulge region of the hair follicles with autofluorescence segment were also examined in 9 scalp skin specimens collected from patients aged 30 weeks to 75 years, by serial sectioning and immuno-staining. Gene expression profile analysis revealed that there were cells with mRNA transcripts of DctHiTyraseLo-Tyrp1LoMC1RLoMITFLo/K15Hi/NPNTHi in the bulge region of the hair follicle with autofluorescence segments, which differed from the patterns in hair bulbs. Small cell-protrusions that sprouted from the outer root sheath (ORS) were clearly observed at the APM inserting level in serial sections of hair follicles by immunohistological staining, which were characteristically replete with K15+/K19+expressing cells. Likewise, the muscle bundles of APM positive for smooth muscle actin intimately encircled these cell-protrusions, and the occurrence frequency of the cell-protrusions was increased in fetal scalp skin compared with adult scalp skin. This study provided the evidence that the cell-protrusions occurring at the ORS relative to the APM insertion are more likely to be characteristic of the visible niches that are filled with abundant stem cells. The occurrence frequency of these cell-protrusions was significantly increased in fetal scalp skin samples (128%) as compared with the scalp skins of younger (49.4%) and older (25.4%) adults (P<0.01), but difference in the frequency between the two adult groups were not significant. These results indicated that these cell-protrusions function as a niche house for the myriad stem cells and/or precursors to meet the needs of the development of hair follicles in an embryo. The micro-dissection used in this study was simple and reliable in excising the bulge region of the hair follicle with autofluorescence segments dependent on their autofluorescence is of value for the study of stem cell culture.
