Katie Cockburn

In the Cockburn lab, we use the skin epidermis as a model to understand tissue regeneration. By combining mouse models with in vivo multiphoton microscopy, we watch stem cells in the living skin and follow their behaviors over hours, days or even weeks as regeneration is taking place in real time. We aim to build a picture of how healthy regeneration is orchestrated at the level of individual cells, local cellular neighborhoods and tissue-wide cues.

1. How do stem cells talk to one another?

We previously demonstrated that stem cells in the skin epidermis act as a dynamic and ever-evolving niche for one another, with one cell’s fate choices influencing the later behavior of its neighbors (Mesa*, Kawaguchi*, Cockburn* et al, 2018). Our group now aims to understand the secreted signals and mechanical cues that that stem cells use as a “molecular language” to talk to one another as they coordinate their behaviors.

2. How do tissues adapt to environmental change?

Our skin faces the unique challenge of protecting our bodies from a constantly changing external environment. Our previous work provided a high-resolution molecular and behavioral map of the epidermal stem cell differentiation process (Cockburn*, Annusver* et al. 2021). We now want to understand how stem cells modify different aspects of this journey to respond to changing environmental conditions.

3. How does cell communication go awry in disease?

Mutations in structural and signaling components can lead to a range of congenital skin conditions characterized by blistering, scaling and inflammation. In many cases, these skin diseases occur mosaically, meaning that patches of mutant and healthy cells are interspersed within a patient’s skin. We are generating genetic models to visualize and track both healthy and diseased cells in the living skin, with the goal of understanding how crosstalk between these two populations contributes to, or ameliorates, disease progression.