The Cuticle of Mammalian Hair

Mammalian vestibular hair cell regeneration.

A mutation in the hair matrix and cuticle keratin KRTHB5 gene causes ectodermal dysplasia of hair and nail type.

BACKGROUND Ectodermal dysplasias are developmental disorders affecting tissues of ectodermal origin. To date, four different types of ectodermal dysplasia involving only hair and nails have been described. In an effort to understand the molecular bases of this form of ectodermal dysplasia, large Pakistani consanguineous kindred with multiple affected individuals has been ascertained from a remo...

Functional assembly of mammalian cochlear hair cells

Hair cells in the mammalian inner ear convert sound into electrical signals that are relayed to the nervous system by the chemical neurotransmitter glutamate. Electrical information encoding sound is then passed through the central nervous system to the higher auditory centres in the brain, where it is used to construct a temporally and spatially accurate representation of the auditory landscap...

Response characteristics of mammalian cochlear hair cells.

Intracellular recordings were made from the low frequency region (third turn) of the guinea pig cochlea. Response characteristics are compared to gross potentials obtained from the organ of Corti fluid space. Inner hair cells (IHCs) possess relatively low (median, -32 mV) initial membrane potentials, whereas that of outer hair cells (OHCs) is higher (median, -53.5 mV). In response to tone burst...

Effect of photodamage on the outermost cuticle layer of human hair.

The surface of the hair is the region most exposed to solar radiation and to the environment in general. Many of the well-known damaging effects of sun exposure on hair must start or even be restricted to the most external cuticle layers. As such, this work investigates morphological, ultrastructural and chemical changes in the outermost cuticle layer of dark brown hair, using atomic force micr...