Pooja Flora
University of California-Riverside, CA·Biology·Early-career
Skin replaces itself continuously throughout life, and that renewal depends on small reserves of stem cells: those in the basal layer of the surface epithelium, and those tucked into a region of the hair follicle called the bulge. As an animal ages, these reserves either shrink or lose their vigor, and the visible results are thinning and fragile skin, hair loss and wounds that heal slowly.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Biochemistry
- Topics
skin stem cells
epidermal stem cells
hair follicle stem cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- 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.
- Test whether Polycomb repressive complexes, conserved protein assemblies that silence genes through histone marks, are functionally required to maintain the longevity and regenerative capacity of skin stem cells, using in vivo loss-of-function mouse genetics.
- Determine whether Polycomb-dependent mechanisms act differently in hair follicle stem cells than in epidermal basal stem cells, as preliminary loss-of-function data suggest.
- Establish whether age-dependent shifts in stem cell chromatin state causally promote aging phenotypes in skin such as epidermal thinning, fragility, hair loss and delayed reepithelialization after injury.
More about the research
What actually drives this decline is largely unknown. This project asks whether the answer lies in epigenetics, the chemical marks placed on DNA-packaging proteins that decide which genes a cell can switch on.
Why it matters
Thinning and fragile skin, hair loss disorders and slow wound healing are common consequences of aging with poorly understood causes. By identifying specific epigenetic regulators that keep skin stem cells functional, this work could point to molecular targets for treating age-related skin and hair conditions and slow healing, and would clarify whether lifespan-extending epigenetic mechanisms found in simpler organisms also operate in mammalian tissues.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
XiangXi Mike Xu
University of Miami, FL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine how brief low intensity ultrasound affects the microtubule network of hair matrix keratinocytes and hair follicle epithelial stem cells exposed to paclitaxel, a drug that locks microtubules in place.
Terry Lechler
Duke University, NC·Biology
Determine the molecular mechanisms that recruit mRNAs and translation regulators to desmosomes, the adhesion structures that bind skin cells together, at the cell edge.
The school
University of California-Riverside: 21 labs on PI Pages, $232M a year on research, 328 research doctorates a year.
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