The water permeability of primary mouse keratinocyte cultures grown at the air-liquid interface.

In order to study the development of the epidermal permeability barrier in vitro, tritiated water (HTO) flux was measured across murine keratinocytes cultured at the air-liquid interface. Using a micro-diffusion technique, it was shown that air-liquid cultures form areas where the water diffusion is comparable to that of intact neonatal mouse skin. When water permeability is measured over a large area of the culture surface, however, significantly higher flux is obtained. These results show that under the culture conditions used, areas of water barrier comparable to intact neonatal mouse skin coexist with regions of less complete barrier formation.