Three-channel imaging reveals the comprehensive protein modifications and their impact on skin appearance induced by multiple stimuli

Abstract

Protein damage repair and prevention are important objectives in skin care industry. Skin protein damage or modifications such as glycation, carbonylation or oxidation, have a significant impact on its function, therefore directly influencing various skin functions or properties including skin appearance. However, there is a lack of comprehensive methods to visualize and assess the protein damage. In this article, we present a three-channel imaging approach to simultaneously visualize and quantitatively evaluate protein oxidation, protein glycation and carbonylation in a full-thickness skin model. We successfully visualized and quantified the impact of the multiple stimuli (ultraviolet radiation A (UVA) and/or methylglyoxal) as well as treatment effect of positive control (vitamins C and E) with this method. Our findings indicate that multiple stimuli exhibit synergistic effects on protein damage. Furthermore, we evaluated a unique combination of skin care ingredients which demonstrated an excellent efficacy in resisting protein damage. Further research revealed that three ingredients of the combination upregulate autophagy in cells, which may contribute to remove damaged proteins and maintain protein quality homeostasis. This method provides a holistic assessment of protein damages and can be employed to evaluate the impact of various stimuli or to assess the efficacy of skin care ingredients in mitigating such damage.