You Wound Me
The pillars of blue, yellow, and red are wounds that are in the process of healing. Wound healing involves stem cells, which can repair and regrow damaged tissue. Images like these help researchers study ways to help heal wounds better.
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DownloadYou Wound Me
The pillars of blue, yellow, and red are wounds that are in the process of healing. Wound healing involves stem cells, which can repair and regrow damaged tissue. Images like these help researchers study ways to help heal wounds better.
What am I looking at?
Here we see the cells within and surrounding wounds on the tail of a mouse. Blue marks cell nuclei (1). Red and yellow mark hair follicle stem cells (2), which are involved in wound healing.
Biology in the Background
Stem cells can develop into a range of different cell types depending on the needs of the organism. When an organism is wounded, these cells activate and begin to differentiate into the cell types that are needed to replace and repair the damaged tissue. The body will produce stem cells and signal them to differentiate until the wound is fully healed.
The researchers that produced this image identified a gene, called the Sept2/ARTS gene, that when deactivated causes stem cells to live longer. With longer living stem cells, wounds heal faster and more thoroughly than normal.
Hair follicle stem cells in a mouse can grow up to 13 micrometers across, roughly 6 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Technique
This image was created using confocal microscopy.
Yaron Fuchs and Samara Brown, National Institutes of Health