Background
CCR10 and CCL27 are the most skin-specific chemokine receptor/ligand pair implicated in skin allergy and inflammatory diseases including atopic dermatitis and psoriasis. This pair is thought to regulate migration and/or maintenance of skin T cells and suggested as therapeutic targets for treatment of skin diseases. However, the functional importance of CCR10/CCL27 in vivo remains elusive.
Objective
We sought to determine expression and function of CCR10 in different subsets of skin T cells under both homeostatic and inflammatory conditions to gain a mechanistic insight into potential roles of CCR10 during skin inflammation.
Methods
Using heterozygous and homozygous CCR10-knockout/EGFP-knockin mice, we assessed expression of CCR10 on regulatory and effector T cells of healthy and inflamed skin induced by chemicals, pathogens and auto-reactive T cells. In addition, we assessed the effect of CCR10-knockout on the maintenance and functions of different T cells and inflammatory status in the skin during different phases of the immune response.
Results
CCR10 expression is preferentially induced on memory-like skin-resident T cells and their progenitors for their maintenance in homeostatic skin but not expressed on most skin-infiltrating effector T cells during inflammation. In CCR10-knockout mice, the imbalanced presence and dysregulated function of resident regulatory and effector T cells result in over-reactive and prolonged innate and memory responses in the skin, leading to increased clearance of Leishmamia infection in the skin.
Conclusion
CCR10 is a critical regulator of skin immune homeostasis.
Hippo signaling plays a crucial role in growth control and tumor suppression by regulating cell proliferation, apoptosis, and differentiation. How Hippo signaling is regulated has been under extensive investigation. Over the past three years, an increasing amount of data have supported a model of actin cytoskeleton blocking Hippo signaling activity to allow nuclear accumulation of a downstream effector, Yki/Yap/Taz. On the other hand, Hippo signaling negatively regulates actin cytoskeleton organization. This review p rovides insight on the mutual regulatory mechanisms between Hippo signaling and actin cytoskeleton for a tight control of cell behaviors during animal development, and points out outstanding questions for further investigations.
Chromatin modifiers affect spatiotemporal gene expression programs that underlie organismal development. The Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) is a crucial chromatin modifier in executing neurodevelopmental programs. Here, we find that PRC2 interacts with the nucleic acid–binding protein Ybx1. In the mouse embryo in vivo, Ybx1 is required for forebrain specification and restricting mid-hindbrain growth. In neural progenitor cells (NPCs), Ybx1 controls self-renewal and neuronal differentiation. Mechanistically, Ybx1 highly overlaps PRC2 binding genome-wide, controls PRC2 distribution, and inhibits H3K27me3 levels. These functions are consistent with Ybx1-mediated promotion of genes involved in forebrain specification, cell proliferation, or neuronal differentiation. In
Ybx1
-knockout NPCs, H3K27me3 reduction by PRC2 enzymatic inhibitor or genetic depletion partially rescues gene expression and NPC functions. Our findings suggest that Ybx1 fine-tunes PRC2 activities to regulate spatiotemporal gene expression in embryonic neural development and uncover a crucial epigenetic mechanism balancing forebrain–hindbrain lineages and self-renewal–differentiation choices in NPCs.
Mammalian pancreatic β-cells play a pivotal role in development and glucose homeostasis through the production and secretion of insulin. Functional failure or decrease in β-cell number leads to type 2 diabetes (T2D). Despite the physiological importance of β-cells, the viability of β-cells is often challenged mainly due to its poor ability to adapt to their changing microenvironment. One of the factors that negatively affect β-cell viability is high concentration of free fatty acids (FFAs) such as palmitate. In this work, we demonstrated that Yes-associated protein (Yap1) is activated when β-cells are treated with palmitate. Our loss- and gain-of-function analyses using rodent insulinoma cell lines revealed that Yap1 suppresses palmitate-induced apoptosis in β-cells without regulating their proliferation. We also found that upon palmitate treatment, re-arrangement of F-actin mediates Yap1 activation. Palmitate treatment increases expression of one of the Yap1 target genes, connective tissue growth factor (CTGF). Our gain-of-function analysis with CTGF suggests CTGF may be the downstream factor of Yap1 in the protective mechanism against FFA-induced apoptosis.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13238-016-0258-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.