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Experiments using mice found a malfunction in adult stem cells that offers insights into why we turn into silver foxes and vixens.
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Credit...Jason Hetherington/Photodisc, via Getty Images
By Kate Golembiewski
April 19, 2023
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Many of the signs of aging are invisible, slow, and subtle — changes in cell division capacity, cardiac output and kidney function don’t exactly show up in the mirror. But gray hairs are one of the most obvious clues that the body isn’t working like it used to.
Our hair turns gray when melanin-producing stem cells stop functioning properly. A new study in mice, but with implications for people and published Wednesday in the journal Nature, provides a clearer picture of the cellular glitches that turn us into silver foxes and vixens.
“This is a really big step toward understanding why we gray,” said Mayumi Ito, an author of the study and a dermatology professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, which develop into all sorts of different organs, adult stem cells have a more set path. The melanocyte stem cells in our hair follicles are responsible for producing and maintaining the pigment in our hair.
