Justin Rudd

Awesome story about #lamellar bodies, unique #keratinocyte #organelles secreted as the “mortar” of the #epidermis that prevents our #skin from drying out. We were ecstatic to play a small part. Especially cool since the organelle was discovered decades ago by Dr Odland at @uwdermatology.bsky.social.

This was an exciting detour into an unexpected area of keratinocyte biology for our group! Stay tuned for implications in cutaneous SCC!

With much help from wonderful collaborators in @simpsonlabuw.bsky.social
and Johann Gudjonsson labs, we found that dysregulation of Flower expression and subcellular localization typifies Grover and Darier disease, diseases of cornification driven by abnormal cytosolic calcium handling.

Using a combination of imaging and proteomic approaches we defined the composition of Flower-positive vesicles and showed that Flower potentiates release of intracellular calcium stores to drive surface trafficking of cargo molecules in differentiated keratinocytes.

With the help of Jos Smits and Ellen van den Bogaard, we found that loss of Flower significantly perturbs barrier function in organotypic epidermis and impairs delivery of LB contents to the stratum corneum.

Membrane structure and internalization dynamics of human Flower isoforms hFWE3 and hFWE4 indicate a conserved endocytic role for hFWE4 Human Flower (hFWE) isoforms hFWE1-4 are putative transmembrane (TM) proteins that reportedly mediate fitness comparisons during cell competition through extracellular display of their C-terminal tail...

We built upon our previous work describing basic structural properties and subcellular localization of Flower isoforms to show that Flower populates LBs in the upper epidermis. www.jbc.org/article/S002...

Flower dependent trafficking of lamellar bodies facilitates maturation of the epidermal barrier - Nature Communications The barrier function of skin epidermis requires polarized secretion of lamellar bodies towards the body surface. Here, Rudd et al. identify Flower (FWE) as a novel regulator of lamellar body trafficki...

So thrilled to finally share our story describing Flower as a regulator of lamellar body (LB) trafficking in the epidermis!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...