If you've ever wondered why scar tissue looks so different from regular skin, it's because scar tissue doesn't contain any fat cells or hair follicles.
But scar tissue is made up almost entirely of cells called myofibroblasts, and doesn't contain any fat cells at all.
So instead of blending into the surrounding skin once the wound has fully healed, it looks completely different - permanently.
The same goes for ageing skin - as we age, we lose our adipocytes, which leads to discolouration and deep, irreversible wrinkles.
This is something that would never occur in nature, seeing as scar tissue has no hair follicles in it.
If hair follicles were induced to grow where a wound was healing, the resulting skin was found to be indistinguishable from pre-existing skin.
Let's hope that some of that knowledge will lead to treatments in the future that can help wounds heal without scarring - because seriously, the pain is bad enough. »