| Summary: | Early growth response factor 1 (<i>EGR1</i>) is a zinc-finger transcription factor that plays a vital role in the development of hair follicles. According to our previous studies, <i>EGR1</i> is a transcriptional promoter of the bone morphogenetic protein 7 (<i>BMP7</i>), a candidate gene involved in the proliferation of dermal papilla cells. Since hair follicles are the basis of lambskin pattern formation and dermal papilla cells (DPCs) act on hair follicle growth, in order to elucidate the role of <i>EGR1</i> and hair follicles, this study aimed to investigate the biological role of <i>EGR1</i> in DPCs. In our study, the <i>EGR1</i> coding sequence (CDS) region was firstly cloned by polymerase chain reaction, and bioinformatics analysis was performed. Then, the function of <i>EGR1</i> was detected by 5-ethynyl-2’-deoxyuridine (EDU) and Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK8), and Western blot (WB) was conducted to analyze the cellular effect of <i>EGR1</i> on DPCs. The proliferative effect of <i>EGR1</i> on DPCs was also further confirmed by detecting its expression by qPCR and WB on marker genes of proliferation, including <i>PCNA</i> and <i>CDK2</i>. The sequence of the <i>EGR1</i> CDS region of a lamb was successfully cloned, and its nucleic acid sequence was analyzed and found to be highly homologous to <i>Rattus norvegicus</i>, <i>Mus musculus</i>, <i>Bos taurus</i> and <i>Homo sapiens</i>. Predictive analysis of the protein encoded by <i>EGR1</i> revealed that it is an extra-membrane protein, and not a secretory protein, with subcellular localization in the nucleus and cytoplasm. The proliferative effect of DPCs was significantly stronger (<i>p</i> < 0.01) in <i>EGR1</i> up-regulated DPCs compared to the controls, while the opposite result was observed in <i>EGR1</i> down-regulated DPCs. Markers of proliferation including <i>PCNA</i> and <i>CDK2</i> also appeared to be differentially upregulated in <i>EGR1</i> gene overexpression compared to the controls, with the opposite result in <i>EGR1</i> gene downregulation. In summary, our study revealed that <i>EGR1</i> promotes the proliferation of DPCs, and we speculate that <i>EGR1</i> may be closely associated with hair follicle growth and development.
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