The following is a summary of “Skin Barrier Fine Tuning through Low-Temperature Lipid Chain Transition,” published in the November 2023 issue of Dermatology by Jančálková, et al.
The lipids in mammals’ stratum corneum (SC) arrange themselves very rigidly to create an important buffer that stops water loss and negative environmental effects. Some barrier lipids change phases just above the normal temperature. They go from a very tight orthorhombic arrangement to a softer hexagonal arrangement and back again. This is the first time anyone knows what this lipid shift does for the skin’s function.
Experiments on the permeability of a human SC showed that the transition changes the activation energy for a model chemical that likes to move laterally along lipid layers but not for water or a big polymer that would use the pore route to cross the SC. The infrared spectroscopy showed that (de)hydration also changed the orthorhombic phase content of SC lipids.
An atomic force microscope showed that human SC lipid monolayers spontaneously changed into 10 nm higher multilamellar islets at 32–37°C but not at room temperature. The results helped them learn more about basic skin physiology. They showed that temperature and moisture can control a small switch from flowing lipids (needed for lipid barrier assembly) to hard and tightly packed lipids in the adult SC (needed for water and leakage barriers).
Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022202X23024004
