Age-related changes in the cell kinetics of rat foot epidermis

The durations of the cell cycle and its component phases have been determined for the basal layer of the epidermis of the skin from the upper surface of the hind foot of the rat using single pulse [3H]-thymidine labelling and the percent labelled mitosis (PLM) technique. Rats of three age groups were used, namely 7, 14 and 52 weeks. The duration of DNA synthesis (Ts) and the G2 plus M phase (TG2 + M) were comparable in 7-week and 52-week-old rats (P greater than 0.1). The major difference between 7-week and 52-week-old rats was in the duration of the G1 phase (TG1). In 7-week-old rats TG1 was 15.0 +/- 0.8 h and in 52-week-old rats TG1 was 31.2 +/- 3.5 h. A consequence of this variation was that the overall duration of the cell cycle was longer in 52-week-old rats (53.9 +/- 5.3 h) than in 7-week-old rats (30.1 +/- 1.3 h). Difficulties were found in fitting a simple curve to the PLM data for 14-week-old rats. This suggests that the proliferative cell population of the epidermis of rats of this age group may be heterogeneous. A satisfactory fit to the data was obtained using a computer model which assumed that the proliferative population of the epidermis of 14-week-old rats was a mixture of cells with cell cycle parameters the same as those of the 7-week and the 52-week-old rats. These two sub-populations of relatively slowly and rapidly proliferating cells were present in the ratio of 2:1.