# Maintenance and Repair of the C. elegans Skin

> **NIH NIH R35** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO · 2023 · $395,000

## Abstract

Summary
 The skin is the primary interface between animals and their external
environment. The skin maintains its structural integrity throughout the life of an organism
while providing passive and active defenses against external challenges. While
understanding of skin development has advanced rapidly in recent years, less is known
of how the mature skin is maintained in adult life, including how it heals wounds. More
broadly, the mechanisms that maintain mature tissues are still relatively poorly
understood. The overall goal of this research program is to understand at the molecular
level how a simple skin layer is repaired and maintained during adult life. The system of
choice is the skin of the nematode C. elegans, a relatively simple and experimentally
tractable model for skin layers. The C. elegans skin comprises a simple epidermal
epithelium and associated basal and apical extracellular matrices, the basement
membrane and the cuticle. Previous studies have how the mature skin responds to injury
and repairs itself. This work led to the discovery of genetic regulators of adult skin
maintenance; loss of function in such genes does not affect skin development but results
in progressive adult-onset degeneration of the adult skin. Future studies will extend
these approaches to dissect how the mature epidermis is maintained in normal and
perturbed conditions. The epidermis and extracellular matrices of the skin function as an
integrated unit in biogenesis, maintenance and repair. The proposed work will also
investigate how the epidermis and extracellular matrix communicate in tissue
maintenance and wound repair. These studies will also address the roles of an
extracellular matrix lipid layer in formation and repair of the skin permeability barrier. The
resulting insights should advance knowledge of skin biology relevant to several aspects
of human health, including normal wound healing, chronic wounds, and skin fibrosis in
hypertrophic scarring.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10531551
- **Project number:** 5R35GM134970-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Andrew D Chisholm
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $395,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-12-05 → 2024-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10531551

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10531551, Maintenance and Repair of the C. elegans Skin (5R35GM134970-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-11 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10531551. Licensed CC0.

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