ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Keratin network modifications lead to the mechanical stiffening of the hair follicle fiber.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Cutaneous Pseudoepitheliomatous Hyperplasia Secondary to Embedded Canine Pet Hair Mimicking Squamous Cell Carcinoma.Case reports in dermatological medicine · 2026Article
- Atomic force microscope protocols for characterising the elastoviscoplastic biomechanical properties of corneocytes.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Mapping cell dynamics in human ex vivo hair follicles suggests pulling mechanism of hair growth.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Review
- Convergent Evolution of Cysteine-Rich Keratins in Horny Teeth of Jawless Vertebrates and in Cornified Skin Appendages of Amniotes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Myc-dependent dedifferentiation of Gata6Nature cell biology · 2023Article
- The biophysical property of the limbal niche maintains stemness through YAP.Cell death and differentiation · 2023Article
- The susceptibility of disulfide bonds to modification in keratin fibers undergoing tensile stress.Biophysical journal · 2022Article
- Porosity at Different Structural Levels in Human and Yak Belly Hair and Its Effect on Hair Dyeing.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Human pollution exposure correlates with accelerated ultrastructural degradation of hair fibers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Prevention of lipid loss from hair by surface and internal modification.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Physics of animal health: on the mechano-biology of hoof growth and form.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- Computation predicts rapidly adapting mechanotransduction currents cannot account for tactile encoding in Merkel cell-neurite complexes.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- Compartmentation of Mitochondrial and Oxidative Metabolism in Growing Hair Follicles: A Ring of Fire.The Journal of investigative dermatology · 2017Article
- Desmosomes and Intermediate Filaments: Their Consequences for Tissue Mechanics.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2017Review
- Silk-fibronectin protein alloy fibres support cell adhesion and viability as a high strength, matrix fibre analogue.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Keratin-associated protein 5-5 controls cytoskeletal function and cancer cell vascular invasion.Oncogene · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The complex mechanical properties of biomaterials such as hair, horn, skin, or bone are determined by the architecture of the underlying fibrous bionetworks. Although much is known about the influence of the cytoskeleton on the mechanics of isolated cells, this has been less studied in tridimensional tissues. We used the hair follicle as a model to link changes in the keratin network composition and architecture to the mechanical properties of the nascent hair. We show using atomic force microscopy that the soft keratinocyte matrix at the base of the follicle stiffens by a factor of ∼360, from 30 kPa to 11 MPa along the first millimeter of the follicle. The early mechanical stiffening is concomitant to an increase in diameter of the keratin macrofibrils, their continuous compaction, and increasingly parallel orientation. The related stiffening of the material follows a power law, typical of the mechanics of nonthermal bending-dominated fiber networks. In addition, we used X-ray diffraction to monitor changes in the (supra)molecular organization within the keratin fibers. At later keratinization stages, the inner mechanical properties of the macrofibrils dominate the stiffening due to the progressive setting up of the cystine network. Our findings corroborate existing models on the sequence of biological and structural events during hair keratinization.
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