Ex vivo imaging and genetic manipulation of mouse hair follicle bulge stem cells

Abstract

Stem cells that reside in the bulge of adult mouse hair follicles are a leading model of tissue stem cell research. Ex vivo culturing, molecular and cell biological characterizations, as well as genetic manipulation of fluorescence-activated cell sorting-isolated bulge stem cells offer a useful experimental pipeline to complement in vivo studies. Here we describe detailed methods for culturing, immunostaining, live cell imaging, and adenoviral infection of bulge stem cells for downstream applications such as in vitro clonal and in vivo patch assays.