| Experiment Id | GSE229111 | Name | Skin type-dependent development of specialized mechanosensory neurons |
| Experiment Type | RNA-Seq | Study Type | Baseline |
| Source | GEO | Curation Date | 2023-08-03 |
| description | Mechanosensory neurons innervating the skin underlie our sense of touch. Fast-conducting, rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors innervating glabrous (non-hairy) skin form Meissner corpuscles, while in hairy skin they form hair follicle longitudinal lanceolate endings. How mechanoreceptors develop axonal endings appropriate for their skin targets is unknown. We report that mechanoreceptor morphologies across different skin regions are indistinguishable during early development but diverge postnatally, in parallel with skin maturation. Neurons terminating along the glabrous and hairy skin border exhibit hybrid morphologies, forming both Meissner corpuscles and lanceolate endings. Additionally, molecular profiles of neonatal glabrous and hairy skin-innervating neurons largely overlap, and ectopic glabrous skin is innervated by neurons that form end-organs appropriate for the altered skin type. Finally, cues, including BMP5 are localized to glabrous skin, and signaling through type I BMP receptors in mechanoreceptors is critical for Meissner corpuscle formation. Thus, mechanoreceptor morphogenesis is flexibly instructed by the target tissues they innervate. Smart seq of glabrous and hairy skin innervating neurons |
