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Somatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin

ABSTRACT: To better understand the homeostatic mechanisms governing melanocytes, we performed deep phenotyping of single-cell expansions of melanocytes from human skin. In total, we interrogated the mutational landscapes, gene expression profiles, and morphological features of 297 melanocytes from 31 donors. To our surprise, a population of melanocytes with low mutation burden was maintained in sun damaged skin. These melanocytes were more stem-like, smaller, and less dendritic than their counterparts with high mutation burdens. We used single-cell spatial transcriptomics (10X Xenium) to reveal the spatial distribution of melanocytes inferred to have low and high mutation burdens (LowMut and HighMut cells), based on their gene expression profiles. LowMut melanocytes were found in hair follicles as well as in the interfollicular epidermis, whereas HighMut melanocytes resided almost exclusively in the interfollicular epidermis. We propose that melanocytes in the hair follicle occupy a privileged niche, protected from UV radiation, but periodically migrate out of the hair follicle to replenish the interfollicular epidermis after waves of photodamage. More broadly, our study illustrates the advantages of a cell atlas that includes mutational information, as cells can change their cellular states and positional coordinates over time, but mutations are like scars, providing a historical record of the homeostatic processes that were operative on each cell.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE286964 | GEO | 2025/02/13

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Increasing evidence suggests that microRNAs may play important roles in regulating self-renewal and differentiation in mammalian stem cells (SCs). Here, we explore this issue in skin. We first characterize microRNA expression profiles of skin SCs versus their committed proliferative progenies and identify a microRNA subset associating with “stemness”. Of these, miR-125b is dramatically downregulated in early SC-progeny. We engineer an inducible mice system and show that when miR-125b is sustained in SC-progenies, tissue balance is reversibly skewed towards stemness at the expense of epidermal, oil-gland and HF differentiation. Using gain-and-loss of function in vitro, we further implicate miR-125b as a repressor of SC differentiation. In vivo, transcripts repressed upon miR-125b induction are enriched >700% for predicted miR-125b targets normally downregulated upon SC-lineage commitment. We verify some of these miR-125b targets, and show that Blimp1 and VDR in particular can account for many tissue imbalances we see when miR-125b is deregulated. We used microarrays to compare the global miRNA expression profile of P4 stage hair follicle ORS cells from DTG (K14-rtTA,TRE-miR-125b) and control littermates. Hair follicle cells were isolated from P4 Backskin (Dox since P3 for 24hrs) of DTG (K14-rtTA/TRE-miR-125b/K14-H2BGFP), TRE (TRE-miR-125b/K14-H2BGFP), KrtA (K14-rtTA/K14-H2BGFP) as following: interfollicular epidermis sheet was pealed from hair follicle & dermis after dispase treatment.The hair follicle & dermis were first digested by collagenase (Sigma). Intact hair follicles were separated from dermal cells by low speed spinning (20g). The hair follicles were then digested by Trypsin and filtered by 40 µm cell strainers. The isolated hair follicle cells were FACS sorted. During FACS, cells were first gated against CD34 (endothelial cells), CD45 (immune cells), CD114 (melanocytes) and DAPI (dead cells). ORS cells were sorted from the remaining cells as α6HiGFPHi.

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Somatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin

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