ZFP42 maintains stemness and rhythmic transcription in human epidermal stem and progenitor cells via CRY1

🥉 Top 5% JournalJan 21, 2026Communications biology

ZFP42 helps keep human skin stem cells active and controls their daily gene activity through CRY1

AI simplified

Circadian Biology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗OA ↗

Abstract

Approximately 10% of expressed genes in human epidermal stem and progenitor cells exhibit rhythmicity.

Rhythmic genes in both fetal and adult epidermal stem and progenitor cells are involved in key biological processes like the cell cycle, senescence, and apoptosis.
ZFP42, a marker for pluripotent stem cells, is enriched in the rhythmic genes of fetal cells.
Knockdown of ZFP42 results in a loss of stemness in human epidermal stem and progenitor cells.
Reduced ZFP42 expression leads to decreased levels of Cryptochrome Circadian Regulator 1 (CRY1), impacting cell proliferation and differentiation.
These findings suggest a link between circadian mechanisms and the maintenance of stemness in epidermal cells.

AI simplified

The role of circadian rhythm in regulating stemness in adult stem cells remains unclear. We investigated this in human epidermal stem and progenitor cells (EPSCs), finding that ~10% of expressed genes exhibit rhythmicity, with shared genes between fetal and adult EPSCs enriched in critical biological processes including the cell cycle, senescence, and apoptosis. Promoter motif analysis revealed ZFP42, a pluripotent stem cell marker, enriched in fetal rhythmic genes. ZFP42 knockdown led to the loss of stemness in human EPSCs and reduced expression of Cryptochrome Circadian Regulator 1 (CRY1), a core component of the molecular circadian clock that functions as a transcriptional repressor within the CLOCK-BMAL1 feedback loop, resulting in decreased cell proliferation and increased differentiation gene expression. These results highlight the critical role of ZFP42 in the circadian regulation of epidermal homeostasis, linking stemness maintenance to circadian mechanisms. Our findings deepen the understanding of how circadian rhythms govern epidermal stem cell functions.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View full text (HTML) ↗