This time, a research group at Tokyo Institute of Technology succeeded in observing the function of cell groups to completely regenerate the skin, using the regeneration of zebrafish fins as a model.Until now, little was known about how cells regenerate and how they are sourced.Therefore, the research group labeled the cells of the regenerated tissue with fluorescence by the genetic cell labeling method and followed them for a long period of time.

　As a result, it was clarified that stem cells in the basal layer and differentiated cells in the surface layer proliferate and are supplied to the defect to regenerate the skin.This was a different result from the special process of "dedifferentiating the skin cells near the wound and returning to the stem cells to start regeneration," as was previously thought.Furthermore, during the regeneration process, cell proliferation was activated over a wide area of ​​the skin, and it was also found that a large number of epithelial cells were supplied to dynamically reconstruct new skin.

　This result, which shows that complete skin regeneration occurs by self-renewal of stem cells in the basal layer without using special methods such as dedifferentiation, provides new hints for the treatment of skin diseases and regenerative medicine. What to give.In other vertebrates, including humans, if this skin regeneration mechanism works in the same way, it is thought that skin regeneration will be possible by controlling the self-proliferation of stem cells in the basal layer.

Paper information:[Development] Heterogeneous fates and dynamic rearrangement of regenerative epidermis-derived cells during zebrafish fin regeneration