Coordinated periodic expression of the imprinted network genes in the hair follicle growth cycle

Abstract

AbstractImprinted genes play a critical role in the proliferation and differentiation of embryonic cells and somatic stem cells. They also participate in the development of a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations when they are dysregulated. In this study, we analyzed expression profiles of the network-forming 16 imprinted genes (imprinted gene network: IGN) in three phases of the hair follicle growth cycle by analyzing publicly available datasets deposited in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). We found elevated expression of IGN genes including H19 in the telogen quiescent phase compared to the anagen proliferative and catagen regression phases in the transcriptomic dataset created from the mouse skin biopsy samples. Our findings suggest a novel role of the 16 IGN genes in the regulation of the hair follicle growth cycle, that manifests possibly through altering the transition between proliferation, quiescence and/or differentiation of the follicular stem cells.