Young animals recover from tissue damage better than adults, and from Charles Darwin's time until now, scientists have puzzled over why this is the case. A study published by Cell Press in the journal Cell has revealed that an evolutionarily conserved gene called Lin28a, which is very active in embryos but not in adults, enhances tissue repair after injury when reactivated in adult mice.

A crucial component of wound healing in many animals, including humans, is the migration of nearby skin cells toward the center of the wound. These cells fill the wound in and help prevent infection while new skin cells regenerate.How do these neighboring skin cells know which way to migrate? What directional cues are they receiving from the wound site?

All winter flakes are not made of snow. Cold weather, with its low relative humidity, wreaks havoc on our skin, making it dry and flaky. Skin dries out if it's deprived of moisture and this dryness often aggravates itchiness, resulting in a condition commonly referred to as "winter itch."During the winter the air is drier, and indoor heating further depletes your skin of moisture.

Our skin plays host to millions of beneficial and potentially disease-causing microorganisms; however, whether our immune system influences these microbial communities to prevent disease is unknown. In a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have explored the microbes living on the skin of patients with primary immunodeficiencies with eczema-like skin conditions.

Loyola University Medical Center researchers have published the first ever study of emotional and psychological anguish, known as "moral distress," experienced by nurses in an intensive care unit for burn patients.The study by first author Jeanie M. Leggett, RN, BSN, MA and colleagues is published in the Journal of Burn Care and Research.

Without sweat, we would overheat and die. In a recent paper in the journal PLOS ONE, USC faculty member Krzysztof Kobielak and a team of researchers explored the ultimate origin of this sticky, stinky but vital substance - sweat gland stem cells.

For the first time, a team of scientists reports successfully growing human hairs from dermal papilla cells taken from the inside of donor hair follicles.

A team of researchers from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated new multimodal optical microscopy technology that when coupled with advanced image co-registration algorithms, can account for soft-tissue deformations that may occur over the time-course of weeks and months.

High voltage, short pulsed electric fields, used for disinfection and solid tumor destruction, selectively damage cell membranes, while preserving overall tissue structure, a phenomenon that may be a key factor in scarless tissue regeneration.The enigma of scars has puzzled human mind for thousands of years. Any organ or tissue after serious injury forms a scar.

Human skin must cope with UV radiation from the sun and other harmful environmental factors that fluctuate in a circadian manner. A study published by Cell Press in the journal Cell Stem Cell has revealed that human skin stem cells deal with these cyclical threats by carrying out different functions depending on the time of day.