Isolation and enrichment of newborn and adult skin stem cells of the interfollicular epidermis

The interfollicular epidermis regenerates from a heterogeneous population of basal cells undergoing either self-renewal or terminal differentiation, thereby balancing cell loss in tissue turnover or in wound repair. In this chapter, we describe a reliable and simple method for isolating interfollicular epithelial stem cells from the skin of newborn mice or from tail and ear skin of adult mice using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). We also provide a detailed protocol for culturing interfollicular epidermal stem cells and to assess their proliferative potential and self-renewing ability. These techniques are useful for directly evaluating epidermal stem cell function in normal mice under different conditions or in genetically modified mouse models.