How key genes cooperate to make healthy skin
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - 16:00
in Health & Medicine
Skin is the body's armor, protecting us from disease agents, injury, excessive water loss, and cold and heat. Yet mutations in a single gene, the gene for the protein p63, cause numerous diseases and malformations of the uppermost layer of skin the epidermis and other tissues. In the epidermis, these range from skin cancers to dysplasias that cause cracking, bleeding, infection, and discoloration.