Filling the GAP: Examining the role of ARHGAP29 in Keratinocyte morphology, migration, and wound healing

Every person incurs wounds over the course of their life. While most minor wounds do not require assistance, more severe cutaneous wounds lead to an estimated cost of $86 Billion in the US annually. Despite this high prevalence and financial burden, the mechanisms underlying wound healing remain incompletely understood. In order for a wound to properly heal, cells from the healthy skin around the wound must move to close the wound and return to normal healthy tissue. One protein, called ARHGAP29 has been shown to be important for the blood vessels and other tissue of the skin to work properly, and our lab has shown that it might be important for allowing the skin to close a wound. But nobody so far has directly evaluated the role of ARHGAP29 in wound healing. To test if ARHGAP29 is important for cells of the epidermis, I modified epidermal cells so they have less ARHGAP29, and find that the cells with less ARHGAP29 don’t move as well. To test if ARHGAP29 actually plays a role in helping wounds close overall, I used mice that have reduced ARHGAP29 to test if they are worse at healing wounds. I found that even though the epidermal cells with less ARHGAP29 couldn’t move as well in a dish, mice with less ARHGAP29 were able to close their wounds. We will need more experiments to understand what exactly ARHGAP29 does in wound healing.