Competition preserves skin’s stress-order memory

This proposed skin study asks whether irritation and stretch leave a lasting memory of their order, amplifying later inflammation after the protective barrier has recovered. Cells exposed to irritation then stretch, or the reverse sequence, would be transferred onto one fresh matrix. The hypothesis predicts that their responses would still differ because p300, a nuclear helper that activates genes, is allocated differently between inflammatory NF-κB regions and force-sensitive YAP/TEAD regions, even when total p300 protein is similar. A difference carried by decellularized matrix would instead support a structural explanation. Testing the proposal requires measurements of p300 binding, newly made RNA, skin water exchange and targeted molecular perturbations.