Dermal Papilla Cells: From Basic Research to Translational Applications.

As an appendage of the skin, hair protects against ultraviolet radiation and mechanical damage and regulates body temperature. It also reflects an individual's health status and serves as an important method of expressing personality. Hair loss and graying are significant psychosocial burdens for many people.

Sensitive Quantitative In Vivo Assay for Evaluating the Effects of Biomolecules on Hair Growth and Coloring Using Direct Microinjections into Mouse Whisker Follicles.

Many people suffer from hair loss and abnormal skin pigmentation, highlighting the need for simple assays to support drug discovery research. Current assays have various limitations, such as being in vitro only, not sensitive enough, or unquantifiable. We took advantage of the bilateral symmetry and large size of mouse whisker follicles to develop a novel in vivo assay called "whisker follicle microinjection assay".

A Cre knockin mouse reveals specific expression of Agouti gene in mesenchymal lineage cells in multiple organs and provides a unique tool for conditional gene targeting.

The mouse Agouti gene encodes a paracrine signaling factor which promotes melanocytes to produce yellow instead of black pigment. It has been reported that Agouti mRNA is confined to the dermal papilla after birth in various mammalian species. In this study, we created and characterized a knockin mouse strain in which Cre recombinase was expressed in-frame with endogenous Agouti coding sequence.

[May-July NDVI variation for the middle Qinling Mountains over the past 194 years indicated by tree rings of ].

Due to the short-term observation record of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the research on long-term NDVI changes is scarce, which limits our understanding of the impacts of NDVI changes in the context of global warming. In this study, a regional tree-ring chronology was developed based on the tree-ring samples of in the middle Qinling Mountains. The results showed that tree-ring width of was significantly positively correlated with May-July NDVI (=0.

[Responses of radial growth of to climatic and hydrological factors at different altitudes in Western Yunnan, China].

A tree-ring width chronology (STD) was established using tree-ring cores of from two sites with different altitudes in Western Yunnan, to study the responses of radial growth to climatic and hydrological factors. The results showed that the radial growth of in Western Yunnan was mainly affected by precipitation, temperature and runoff. The radial growth of at high altitude (2413.