Revisiting the significance of keratin expression in complex epithelia

A large group of keratin genes (n=54 in the human genome) code for intermediate filament (IF)-forming proteins and show differential regulation in epithelial cells and tissues. Keratin expression can be highly informative about the type of epithelial tissue, differentiation status of constituent cel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of cell science Vol. 135; no. 20
Main Authors Cohen, Erez, Johnson, Craig, Redmond, Catherine J, Nair, Raji R, Coulombe, Pierre A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England 15.10.2022
Subjects
Animals
Cell Differentiation - genetics
Epithelial Cells - metabolism
Epithelium - metabolism
Humans
Keratinocytes - metabolism
Keratins - genetics
Keratins - metabolism
Mice
Keratin
Single-cell biology
Transcriptomics
Homeostasis
Proliferation
Differentiation
Intermediate filament
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Summary:A large group of keratin genes (n=54 in the human genome) code for intermediate filament (IF)-forming proteins and show differential regulation in epithelial cells and tissues. Keratin expression can be highly informative about the type of epithelial tissue, differentiation status of constituent cells and biological context (e.g. normal versus diseased settings). The foundational principles underlying the use of keratin expression to gain insight about epithelial cells and tissues primarily originated in pioneering studies conducted in the 1980s. The recent emergence of single cell transcriptomics provides an opportunity to revisit these principles and gain new insight into epithelial biology. Re-analysis of single-cell RNAseq data collected from human and mouse skin has confirmed long-held views regarding the quantitative importance and pairwise regulation of specific keratin genes in keratinocytes of surface epithelia. Furthermore, such analyses confirm and extend the notion that changes in keratin gene expression occur gradually as progenitor keratinocytes commit to and undergo differentiation, and challenge the prevailing assumption that specific keratin combinations reflect a mitotic versus a post-mitotic differentiating state. Our findings provide a blueprint for similar analyses in other tissues, and warrant a more nuanced approach in the use of keratin genes as biomarkers in epithelia.
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ISSN:0021-9533
1477-9137
DOI:10.1242/jcs.260594