Two Newly-Discovered Genes Could Make Hair Loss a Thing of the Past

Hair loss; it’s the most unmistakable sign of aging. Nearly everyone experiences it as they gradually lose a part of their youth as the years edge-on. Intrigued, one professor set out to answer one of life’s most puzzling questions; how exactly does aging cause hair loss? Over the years, this journey led Dr. Rui Yi—based at Northwestern University—to unearth one of the most groundbreaking discoveries on hair loss. Mind you, he is not the pioneering scientist in this quest. Others before him have laid the foundations by understanding that when stem cells become exhausted and die,  our organs and tissues fail to be replenished…and this includes our hair! Yes, it’s an integral part of aging. But Dr. Yi and his team of scientists made a recent discovery that could shake up what we know about stem cells and how they correlate to hair loss. Ladies and gentlemen; let’s introduce you to the Great Stem Cell Escape! According to the study, once you age, stem cells begin to escape all together from the biological structures that house them. Yi’s study also discovered two genes that play a critical role in the aging of hair; which could potentially stop us from experiencing the stem cell escape, and thus, preventing hair loss. Stem cells play an important role in the growth of hair by stimulating hair follicles. These small, tunnel-shaped organs are the regions from which hair grows. Usually, they undergo a cyclical period of growth as a result of a concentration of stem cells in a specialized region called the bulge divide, and gradually transform into the hair shaft and its sheath. But after a few days, these hair follicles become inactive and gradually degenerate. The hair shaft stops growing and is shed, only to be replaced by a new strand of hair, and the cycle goes on. Like most scientists, Yi believes that stem cells die with age through a process known as stem cell exhaustion. He expected that once the stem cells die, the hair would turn white and eventually die. However, this theory was never fully tested. And so, to have a deeper understanding of hair loss, Dr. Yi decided to watch individual strands of hair and study how they grew and aged. Initially, researchers would study hair loss by taking large portions of tissue from animals of different ages and examining how they transform. However, there are two limitations to this process. First, the tissue being studied was already dead. And second, it is unclear what led to the transformations of these hairs, as well as what came after them. So, they decided to take a more rigorous approach. They observed the individual growth of each hair follicle in the ears of mice through the use of a long-wavelength laser that could penetrate deep into the tissue. They first put the mice under anesthesia, labeled the individual hair follicles using green fluorescent protein, and put the ears under the microscope to observe what would happen to the same hair follicle over a period of time. What they discovered was groundbreaking. When the animals started growing old and their hair turned gray, their stem cells began to escape from their biological structures. The cells even transformed shape from round to amoeba-like in order to move through tiny holes found in their biological enclaves. They then recovered their normal shapes before escaping away. At times, the escaping stem cells moved long distances in terms of cells distance from where they were. The stem cells then suddenly disappeared, most likely eliminated by the immune system. But why was this happening exactly? Well, to get to the bottom of this, Dr. Yi and his colleagues tried to determine whether certain genes were controlling the process. The genes in question were NFATC1 and FOXC1. Yi’s team discovered that these genes were less active in older hair follicle cells. So they bred certain mice not to possess these genes and placed them as master controllers. By the time the mice were 5 months old, they had lost all their hair. By 16 months, the animals looked aged and ancient. Plus all their hair strands were gray. This showed that a higher concentration of these two genes, even in older mice, could potentially reduce stem cell and hair loss. Such a groundbreaking discovery makes Dr. Yi and his colleagues wonder what other unknown natural processes could be learned that could boost anti-aging and enhance longevity.