Skin Barrier

Carolyn Byrne PhD

Research Field

Skin barrier prevents desiccation, microbial assault and toxicity at the organism-environment interface and resides in both the epidermal 
stratum corneum and the  underlying adhesion complexes.   Skin barrier also protects against ultraviolet radiation.  My group is interested in the regulation of keratinocyte differentiation and skin barrier formation during fetal development, and the role and regulation of specific classes of skin barrier proteins (LCE proteins) that are differentially expressed and responsive to ultraviolet B.  The group has lately focussed on the PI-3kinase-AKT pathway which we propose pleiotropically  regulates late terminal differentiation and barrier formation. We show that this pathway is a target of environmental influences such as viral infection and ultraviolet radiation causing barrier compromise. AKT kinases are also differentially altered during skin carcinogenesis and with clinical collaborators we are investigating the role this pathway plays in skin tumour progression.

Key research papers

1 O'Shaughnessy R.F.L, Akgul B., Storey A., Pfister H., Harwood C. and Byrne C. (2007) . Cutaneous human papilloma virus early genes downregulate Akt1 while Akt2 upregulation associates with tumourigenesis. Cancer Res., 67: 8207-15 .

2 O'Shaughnessy, R.F.L., Welti, J.C., Cooke, J.C., Avilion,, A.A. Monks, B., . Birnbaum, M.J. and Byrne, C. (2007). AKT-dependent HspB1 (Hsp27) activity in epidermal differentiation J. Biol Chem. 282:17297-17305.

3 Hardman, M.J., Liu, K., Avilion, A.A., Merritt, A., Brennan, K., Garrod, D.R. and Byrne, C. (2005) Desmosomal cadherin misexpression alters bcatenin stability and epidermal differentiation. Mol. Cell Biol. 25(3): 969-978.

4 Marshall , D., Hardman, M.J., Nield, K and Byrne, C. (2001) Differentially-expressed, late constituents of the epidermal cornified envelope. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98:13031-13036.

5 Hardman, M.J., Sisi, P., Banbury, D.N. and Byrne, C.  (1998)  Patterned acquisition of skin barrier function during development.   Development. 125, 1541-1552.