Cytochalasin B influences a variety of cellular events that are associated with the contractile microfilament system and the formation of binucleate cells. Along with the formation of binucleate cells, cytochalasin B also causes an acceleration of cells from G1 to S in the cell cycle. By pulsing the cytochalasin B for 30 minutes and allowing for a previously established lag time (17.5 hours) a stimulation of thymidine incorporation into DNA of proliferative epidermal and dermal cells was found in both control and stripped epidermis. Autoradiographic analysis confirmed that the stimulation was due to an increased number of basal cells accelerated from G1 to S phase. A minimal number of binucleate basal cells, 1 in 300, was observed, which suggests that the stimulated synthesis is independent of binucleate cell formation. The amount of stimulation is maximum with cytochalasin B concentration pulse between 5gamma and 30gamma/ml. The results suggest a possible link in coupling cell membrane and surface events with subsequent increased cell nuclei synthetic activity.

The removal of the topmost cell layers of the epidermal stratum corneum by stripping initiates a series of biochemical events which alters the normal homeostatic control of and results in the acceleration of the cell cycle in basal cells which are ten to twenty cell layers removed from the site of stripping. One measure of accelerated events is a stimulation of thymidine incorporation into epidermal DNA at time intervals following stripping. Two peaks of maximal stimulation occur between 12 and 24 hr and 48 and 54 hr after stripping.Stimulation of thymidine incorporation into epidermal DNA by limited stripping is a useful technique for studying the stripping-initiated signal at the stratum corneum and its subsequent translation at the proliferative cell receptor site.