The master regulatory role of the transcription factor p63 in skin disease

24 January 2019

PhD candidate Jieqiong Qu from Jo Huiqing Zhou’s group in Molecular Developmental Biology, theme Reconstructive and regenerative medicine, has published a paper in Cell Reports on the master regulatory role of the transcription factor p63 in skin disease.

Cell Reports: link.

The transcription factor p63 plays an important role in the development of the epidermis, and mutations of p63 give rise to disorders that often manifest with skin problems. Previous work from the Zhou group showed that p63 is a master regulator controlling the enhancer landscape in epidermal cells. In this Cell Reports publication, using transcriptomics and epigenomics  approaches, Qu et al. showed that mutations of p63 associated with Ectrodactyly-Ectodermal Dysplasia-Cleft Lip/Palate (EEC) syndrome alter the enhancer landscape in epidermal cells.  The rewired enhancer landscape and gene expression lead to affected epidermal cell identity, which underlines the disease mechanism of EEC syndrome.