Pantelis Rompolas, PhD, and a team of researchers were recently published in Nature Communications. Their work reveals how mechanical stress in skin leads to the formation of fluid-filled “stress vesicles” in epidermal stem cells, influencing calcium signaling and cell fate. This work contributes to our understanding of skin plasticity and sheds light on how mechanical forces shape tissue integrity.

Mechanical stress in the skin can lead to significant changes at the cellular level. This study investigates how the skin adapts to mechanical stress by examining the role of epidermal stem cells. Using two-photon intravital imaging, researchers observed that mechanical forces induce the formation of intracellular “stress vesicles” in these cells, which fill with extracellular fluid. Depending on their size, stress vesicles can deform the nucleus, and the degree of nuclear deformation predicts the cellular fate.  Moreover, mechanical stress elevates intracellular calcium levels, and disrupting the mechanosensitive Piezo1 ion channel affects these dynamics and the formation of stress vesicles. Taken together, this study highlights stress vesicles as crucial mediators in linking mechanical stress to stem cell fate.

Read the full paper here: https://rdcu.be/e3Fox