HACD1

Overview

HACD1 (3-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydratase 1) is a lipid metabolism enzyme and smooth-muscle gene expressed in neural-crest-lineage cells. In the context of normal skin biology, it marks a low-mutation-burden (LowMut) melanocyte subpopulation with neural-crest characteristics.

Alterations observed in the corpus

  • HACD1 is a transcriptomic marker of the LowMut melanocyte subpopulation (low UV mutation burden, enriched in hair follicles) in a single-cell multi-omic atlas of 297 melanocytes from 31 donors; co-expressed with smooth-muscle neural-crest genes VCAN, FBN1, TAGLN, MYL9, and MYLK PMID:39975212.

Cancer types (linked)

  • No cancer-type associations reported in the corpus. Findings are from non-lesional skin adjacent to a melanoma patient; no melanoma driver claim is made PMID:39975212.

Co-occurrence and mutual exclusivity

  • HACD1 expression anti-correlates with HighMut markers (HMOX1, HERC2, MC1R, HLA-DPA1) in the same melanocyte atlas; the two programs (LowMut / HighMut) are mutually exclusive at the cell level PMID:39975212.

Therapeutic relevance

  • Not reported in the corpus.

Open questions

  • Whether LowMut HACD1+ melanocytes serve as a UV-protected stem-cell reservoir relevant to melanoma initiation or prevention is a hypothesis that requires longitudinal lineage-tracing validation PMID:39975212.

Sources

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