Terry Lechler
Duke University, NC·Biology
Skin must constantly renew itself and still hold together as a tough barrier against the outside world. How do its cells coordinate that work?
- Fields
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
desmosomes
cell adhesion
epidermis
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Determine the molecular mechanisms that recruit mRNAs and translation regulators to desmosomes, the adhesion structures that bind skin cells together, at the cell edge.
- Measure the immediate change in protein production when desmosomes are disrupted by wounding or by pemphigus antibodies, which attack desmosomes in an autoimmune blistering disease.
- Use single-molecule live imaging to map where proteins are made in skin cells with intact desmosomes and with disrupted desmosomes.
- Define the mechanical and chemical pathways by which differentiated epidermal cells, including through their contractility, control stem cell proliferation, migration and fate decisions.
- Uncover how newly identified regulators of mitotic spindle orientation generate forces on astral microtubules to set the direction of division in epidermal cells.
- Use new mouse models to define how spindle orientation contributes to hair follicle formation and to maintaining the adult epidermis against overgrowth.
More about the research
Three projects address this question in the epidermis, the outer layer of skin. One asks how adhesion structures that bind skin cells together also control which proteins cells make. Another asks how mature skin cells send signals back to the stem cells that produce them. The third asks how dividing skin cells choose the direction in which they split, a choice that shapes tissue structure and cell fate. Together they examine how cell structure, mechanical force and cell division keep skin healthy, and what fails in blistering disease, wounding and tissue overgrowth.
Why it matters
This work could inform treatments for blistering skin diseases such as pemphigus, for heart muscle disorders caused by desmosome defects, and for wound healing. Learning how skin stem cells are controlled could help researchers manipulate these cells for regenerative therapies and treat diseases caused by stem cell dysregulation. Understanding spindle orientation could also explain how tissues resist overgrowth driven by cancer-causing mutations.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Pooja Flora
University of California-Riverside, CA·Biology·Early-career
Characterize how gene expression and chromatin accessibility change with age across the distinct stem cell pools of adult skin, including basal interfollicular epithelial stem cells and hair follicle bulge stem cells, using multi-omics profiling.
Yejing Ge
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Genetics
Define how DNA methylation and histone methylation silence retrotransposons in adult mouse skin, using genetic mice that lack a key epigenetic repressor of these repeats.
Maureen Cetera
University of Minnesota, MN·Biology
Identify directional cues that coordinate Planar Cell Polarity across the mouse epidermis, using natural mouse variants with region-specific hair misorientation and a candidate-gene approach.
The school
Duke University: 61 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 417 research doctorates a year.
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