Traveling stripes on the skin of a mutant mouse
Traveling stripes on the skin of a mutant mouse
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1731184100
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发表时间：
2003-08-19
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Kondo, S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Suzuki, N;Hirata, M;Kondo, S
在动物的发育过程中，复杂的结构从表面上看不成形的卵中自动形成。细胞如何产生比每个细胞大得多的空间模式是发育生物学的关键问题之一。有人认为，动物的空间模式形成的原理与非生物系统中的调度结构形成的原理相同。然而，由于生物系统的复杂性，这种现象的分子细节很少得到澄清。在这篇文章中，我们介绍了一个发生在突变小鼠皮肤上的模式形成现象的例子。突变小鼠在Foxn 1（Whn或nude）基因的剪接中存在缺陷，该基因在毛囊中色素开始积累后立即终止毛囊发育。未成熟的毛囊迅速排出，新的毛发周期重新开始。最后，老鼠的皮肤颜色出现振荡。幼年小鼠的颜色振荡是同步的，但相位在皮肤区域之间逐渐转移，最终形成移动的均匀间隔的条纹。虽然时间尺度有很大的不同，但突变小鼠的模式变化与可激发介质上产生的非线性波（如Belousov-Zhabotinskii反应）具有共同的特征，这表明波型形成的共同原理。这种现象背后的分子细节可以从最近的分子研究中得到证实。
In the course of animal development, complex structures form autonomously from the apparently shapeless egg. How cells can produce spatial patterns that are much larger than each cell is one of the key issues in developmental biology. It has been suggested that spatial patterns in animals form through the same principles by which dispatched structures are formed in the nonbiological system. However, because of the complexity of biological systems, molecular details of such phenomena have been rarely clarified. In this article, we introduce an example of a pattern-forming phenomenon that occurs in the skin of mutant mice. The mutant mouse has a defect in splicing of the Foxn1 (Whn or nude) gene, which terminates hair follicle development just after pigment begins to accumulate in the follicle. The immature follicles are rapidly discharged, and a new hair cycle resumes. Eventually, the skin color of the mouse appears to oscillate. The color oscillation is synchronous in juvenile mice, but the phase gradually shifts among skin regions to eventually form traveling, evenly spaced stripes. Although the time scale is quite different, the pattern change in the mutant mouse shares characteristics with the nonlinear waves generated on excitable media, such as the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction, suggesting that a common principle underlies the wave pattern formation. Molecular details that underlie the phenomenon can be conjectured from recent molecular studies.