Research
We study stem cell dynamics in the living skin.
A fundamental question in regenerative biology concerns how stem cells perform behaviors such as self-renewal and differentiation at the right times and places to support lifelong maintenance of our tissues. In the Cockburn lab, we want to understand this problem in the context of skin, the essential barrier that protects us from the environment and one of the most high-turnover tissues in our bodies.
By combining mouse models with in vivo multiphoton microscopy, we watch stem cells in the living skin and follow their behaviors over hours, days or even weeks as regeneration is taking place in real time. We aim to build a picture of how healthy regeneration is orchestrated at the level of individual cells, local cellular neighborhoods and tissue-wide cues.
How do stem cells talk to one another?
We previously demonstrated that stem cells in the epidermis act as a dynamic and ever-evolving niche for one another, with one cell’s fate choices influencing the later behavior of its neighbors (Mesa*, Kawaguchi*, Cockburn* et al, 2018). Our group now aims to understand the molecular language that stem cells use to talk to one another as they coordinate their behaviors.
How do tissues adapt to environmental change?
The skin faces the unique challenge of protecting our bodies from a constantly changing external environment. Our previous work provided a high-resolution molecular and behavioral map of the epidermal stem cell differentiation process (Cockburn*, Annusver* et al. 2022). We now want to understand how stem cells modify different aspects of this journey in order to respond to changing environmental demands.
How does cell communication go awry in disease?
In many cases cutaneous diseases occur mosaically, meaning that patches of mutant and healthy cells are interspersed within a patient’s skin. We are generating genetic models to visualize and track both healthy and diseased cells in the living skin, with the goal of understanding how crosstalk between these two populations contributes to, or ameliorates, disease progression.