14 DAY TRIAL // A scientist at the University of Manchester has discovered the mechanism that binds skin cells together, and he says that this finding could be the end of debilitating and painful skin conditions, and of deadly heart defects as well.
According to Professor David Garrod, in the Faculty of Life Sciences, it seems that the glue molecules bind only to similar glue molecules on other cells, forming a very tough, resilient structure.
The Professor worked with Zhuxiang Nie, Anita Merritt, Mansour Rouhi and Lydia Tabernero, and they studied the cells of the epidermis by using chemical cross-linking.
This way, they discovered what seems to be the main mechanism that allows the glue molecules of desmosomes of skin cells to bind to each other.
“"For reasons that we do not fully understand there are several different but closely-related glue molecules within each desmosome,” the Professor explained.
“Our results show that each glue molecule on one cell binds primarily to another of the same type on the neighboring cell, meaning the binding is highly specific.
“This was very surprising because previous studies using different techniques had not been able to give such a clear answer on the specificity of binding.”
Professor Garrod, explained that the human sin is made of three different layers, “the outermost of which is the epidermis.
“This layer is only about 1/10th of a millimeter thick yet it is tough enough to protect us from the outside environment and withstand the wear and tear of everyday life.
“One reason our epidermis can do this is because its cells are very strongly bound together by tiny structures called desmosomes, sometimes likened to rivets.
“We know that people who have defects in their desmosomes have problems with their epidermis and get extremely unpleasant skin diseases.
“Understanding how desmosomes function is essential for developing better treatments for these and other types of skin disease and for non-healing wounds.
“Desmosomes are also extremely important in locking together the muscle cells of the heart, and hearts where desmosomes are defective can fail catastrophically, causing sudden death in young people.
“Hence our findings may also be relevant in the heart and in developing new treatments for heart disease."
The researchers said that these results are very important since it is this kind of binding that could be the cure for “non-healing wounds, other skin diseases and heart problems.
“We could do this if we understood how to make medicines that would lock or unlock the desmosomes as required,” he added.
The researchers say that further investigations are necessary if they want to develop clinical applications for their discovery.
This work was funded by the Medical Research Council, and it is published as the paper of the week in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).