Joseph Chavarria-Smith, Cecilia P C Chiu, Janet K Jackman, Jianping Yin, Juan Zhang, Jason A Hackney, Wei-Yu Lin, Tulika Tyagi, Yonglian Sun, Janet Tao, Debra Dunlap, William D Morton, Swapnil V Ghodge, Henry R Maun, Hong Li, Hilda Hernandez-Barry, Kelly M Loyet, Emily Chen, John Liu, Christine Tam, Brian L Yaspan, Hao Cai, Mercedesz Balazs, Joseph R Arron, Jing Li, Arthur J Wittwer, Rajita Pappu, Cary D Austin, Wyne P Lee, Robert A Lazarus, Jawahar Sudhamsu, James T Koerber, Tangsheng Yi
The epidermis is a barrier that prevents water loss while keeping harmful substances from penetrating the host. The impermeable cornified layer of the stratum corneum is maintained by balancing continuous turnover driven by epidermal basal cell proliferation, suprabasal cell differentiation, and corneal shedding. The epidermal desquamation process is tightly regulated by balance of the activities of serine proteases of the Kallikrein-related peptidases (KLK) family and their cognate inhibitor lymphoepithelial Kazal type-related inhibitor (LEKTI), which is encoded by the serine peptidase inhibitor Kazal type 5 gene...
December 14, 2022: Science Translational Medicine