We studied by light and electron microscopy the elastic fibers in he sun exposed and sun protected skin of normal and psoriatic individuals of different ages in order to separate the changes of actinic damage from those of chronological aging. The sun exposed skin showed 2 types of elastic fiber abnormalities-one related to actinic damage and the other to chronological aging. The sun protected buttock skin showed only the latter. From ages 30 to 70, a minority of the elastic fibers exhibited abnormalities that appeared to represent a process of fiber disintegration. After age 70, the majority of elastic fibers showed these abnormalities. These abnormalities were present without accompanying inflammatory cells. Also, there was morphological evidence of continuing synthesis of elastic fibers during the lifetime of these subjects, except that from ages 50-93, the fibers appeared to be loosely, rather than compactly, assembled. Incubation of dermal slices from buttock skin of young adults with porcine pancreatic elastase and bovine chymotrypsin produced elastic fiber degradation that closely simulated the changes that were observed in aged sun protected skin. We propose that one of the features of cutaneous aging is a slow, spontaneous, progressive degradative process inherent in the elastic fiber that can be enzymatically accelerated from decades to hours by elastase and chymotrypsin.

The cutaneous microcirculation is organized as two horizontal plexuses. One is situated 1-1.5 mm below the skin surface and the other is at the dermal-subcutaneous junction. Ascending arterioles and descending venules are paired as they connect the two plexuses. From the upper layer, arterial capillaries rise to form the dermal papillary loops that represent the nutritive component of the skin circulation. There are sphincter-like smooth muscle cells at the point where the ascending arterioles divide to form the arteriolar component of the upper horizontal plexus. At the dermal-subcutaneous junction, there are collecting veins with two cusped valves that are oriented to prevent the retrograde flow of blood. Laser Doppler flowmetry has demonstrated vasomotion of red cell flux localized to the sites of ascending arterioles. The simultaneous recording by laser Doppler flowmetry of red cell flux and the concentration of moving red blood cells from individual sites allows one to construct topographic maps of these two values. These two maps, based on initial studies using correlative skin biopsies, can define 1 mm3 volumes of skin that are predominantly arteriolar in composition, venular in composition, or essentially devoid of all microvascular elements. The electron and light microscopic features that define the microvascular segments, when coupled with that ability of laser Doppler flowmetry to define the predominant microvascular segments under the probe, allow one to study both the mechanisms of normal physiologic states and the pathogenetic mechanisms underlying pathologic skin disorders in which the microvasculature plays a predominant role.

The particulate enzyme, endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), produces nitric oxide to maintain normal vasodilator tone in blood vessels. In this study, we demonstrate that eNOS is a Golgi-associated protein in cultured endothelial cells and intact blood vessels. Using a heterologous expression system in HEK 293 cells, we show that wild-type myristoylated and palmitoylated eNOS, but not mutant, non-acylated eNOS targets to the Golgi. More importantly, HEK 293 cells expressing wild-type eNOS release substantially more NO than cells expressing the mutant, non-acylated enzyme. Thus, eNOS is a novel Golgi-associated protein, and Golgi compartmentalization is necessary for the enzyme to respond to intracellular signals and produce NO.

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