Assembly of Human Stratum Corneum Lipids In Vitro: Fluidity Matters

The function of living systems is essentially connected to fluid biological membranes. Lipid fluctuations can readily seal defects and leaks, enable membrane remodeling, regulate the passive permeability of solutes, and facilitate protein function (Nagle and Tristram-Nagle, 2001). In contrast, the skin barrier lipids are primarily rigid and tightly packed (Elias et al., 1983). In addition, these ceramide-dominant lipid mixtures do not form the canonical bilayers but minimally hydrated stacks of the long periodicity phase (LPP, ∼13 nm periodicity) in the stratum corneum extracellular spaces (Bouwstra et al., 1991, White et al., 1988).

Source: Journal of Investigative Dermatology - December 20, 2021 Category: Dermatology Authors: Irene Sagrafena, Georgios Paraskevopoulos, Petra Pullmannov á, Lukáš Opálka, Anna Nováčková, Ourania Lourantou, Kateřina Vávrová Tags: Letters to the Editor Source Type: research