Depositphotos
American researchers have discovered the ability to epithelial cells human skin exchange signals and warn of danger.
This came as a surprise to scientists, as it was previously believed that these cells were unable to communicate. The discovery may provide new opportunities for the creation of electrical medical devices, that will accelerate wound healing.
«Epithelial cells do things that no one has ever thought of When injured, they «shout» to their neighbors, slowly, persistently, and over surprising distances. It’s like a nerve impulse, but 1000 times slower», — notes one of the researchers from Steve Granik is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Granik with a colleague, a biomedical engineer Sun-Ming Yu, have developed a special system for research communication of epithelial cells. They created a chip connected to about 60 electrodes. This chip was covered with a layer of lab-grown keratinocytes — key epithelial cells that make up the outer layer of human skin, the epidermis Using a laser, the researchers damaged a layer of epithelial cells and used electrode array to listen for further electrical shifts.
«We monitored how cells coordinate their responses It’s a slowed-down, excited conversation», — said Sun-Ming Yu.
The received signals propagated at a speed of about 10 millimeters per second at a distance of up to hundreds of micrometers from the wound site. According to the researchers, the communication found is based on ion channels in the form of small pores in cell membranes. These channels provide transportation of charged ions, mainly calcium.
These ion channels in epithelial cells respond to mechanical stress, such as pressure or stretching, which is somewhat different from the ion channels of neurons that respond to changes in voltage or chemical reactions.
Epithelial cell signals last much longer than neuronal signals. Some examples of epithelial cell communication recorded by the researchers lasted up to 5 hours. However, the voltage had a similar amplitude to that observed in neurons, and the communication cycled through phases, just like neuronal communication.
Sung-Ming Yu emphasized that it is still not fully known what exactly cells use to transmit signals. Do the following work different types of epithelial cells in different ways when it comes to transmitting harmful information, although initial tests suggest that calcium ions are involved More work needs to be done to understand how this works.
The article was published in the journal PNAS
Source: Science Alert