The intermediate filament system of the keratinizing mouse forestomach epithelium: coexpression of keratins of internal squamous epithelia and of epidermal keratins in differentiating cells.

The internal epithelium of mouse forestomach represents a fully keratinized tissue that has many morphological aspects in common with the integumental epidermis. In the present study we have, therefore, analyzed keratin expression in the total epithelium, in subfractions of basal cells and in living and dead suprabasal cells that were obtained by Percoll density gradient centrifugation of trypsin-dissociated forestomach keratinocytes. The keratin analysis revealed that basal forestomach keratinocytes synthesize the same keratin types as basal epidermal cells (60000, 52,000 and 47,000 daltons), whereas differentiating cells contain both the epidermal suprabasal keratin pair (67,000 and 59,000 daltons) and the suprabasal keratin pair characteristic for other internal squamous epithelia (57,000 and 47,000 daltons). Indirect immunofluorescence using an antibody recognizing the members of the epidermal-type suprabasal keratin pair and in-situ-hybridization experiments using specific cDNA probes for the members of the internal-type keratin pair showed that the two keratin pairs are uniformly coexpressed in living suprabasal forestomach keratinocytes. Furthermore, it could be shown that distinct cells in the basal cell layer acquire the ability to express both the 67,000/59,000 dalton and the 57,000/47,000 dalton keratin pair and that some basal cells apparently lose the ability to synthesize mRNAs for basal keratins.