Int J Biol Sci 2019; 15(7):1368-1382. doi:10.7150/ijbs.33233 This issue
Research Paper
1. Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Shaanxi Province, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China
2. Life Science Research Center, Yulin University, Yulin, China
3. School of Medicine, Shanxi Datong University, Datong, China
Recent studies have demonstrated that dermal papilla cell-derived exosomes (DPC-Exos) promote the anagen stage of hair follicle (HF) growth and delay the catagen stage. However, the roles of DPC-Exos in regulating hair follicle stem cell (HFSC) quiescence and activation remain unknown. Here, we found that HFSC differentiation was induced by co-culture with DPCs, and that DPC-Exos attached to the surface of HFSCs. Using micro RNA (miRNA) high-throughput sequencing, we identified 111 miRNAs that were significantly differentially expressed between DPC-Exos and DPCs, and the predicted target genes of the top 34 differentially expressed miRNAs indicated that DPC-Exos regulate HFSCs proliferation and differentiation via genes involved in cellular signal transduction, fatty acid expression regulation, and cellular communication. The overexpression of miR-22-5p indicated that it negatively regulates HFSC proliferation and LEF1 was revealed as the direct target gene of miR-22-5p. We therefore propose the miR-22-5p-LEF1 axis as a novel pathway regulating HFSC proliferation.
Keywords: exosome, hair follicle stem cells, dermal papilla, proliferation