Elaine V. Fuchs

Research Interests

Our Skin: Mechanisms Controlling Normal Development and Skin Cancers

Our central objective is to explore the mechanisms governing development and differentiation in epidermis and hair of mammalian skin and to understand how these processes go awry in genetic skin diseases. To facilitate these studies, we use cultured keratinocytes from human and mouse skin, one of the few systems where adult stem cells can be maintained and propagated in the laboratory. We also use technologies for targeting foreign genes to epidermis and hairs of transgenic animals, and for removing single epidermal or hair genes from the chromosomes of either mouse embryos (knockout) or skin (conditional inducible knockout). Our global aim is to take a molecular approach to skin biology and to apply our knowledge to human genetics and medical research.