(a) Principle component analysis of microarray data from human volar and nonvolar epidermis show clear clustering of volar skin tissue. n = 3 samples from each site. (b) Unsupervised clustering of expression data from human volar and nonvolar tissue shows that KRT9 is one of the most unique genes in volar skin. n = 3 samples from each site). KRT9 had the highest fold change transcript in volar tissue (30.6-fold, P = 0.0002) (Kim et al., 2016 under GEO: GSE39267. (c) KRT9 protein expression is robust in volar compared with nonvolar human epidermis, as measured by Western blot (top) and normalized to b-Actin (bottom). n = 3, *P < 0.05. (d) In early passaged in vitro solo culture of keratinocytes, microarray analysis shows that KRT9 is maintained as the most unique transcript in volar keratinocytes compared with nonvolar keratinocytes, under GEO: GSE116055. (e) KRT9 mRNA expression of volar keratinocytes is higher than nonvolar keratinocytes both in preconfluent and postconfluent cultures, as measured by quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase–PCR and normalized to RPLP0. n = 3, *P < 0.05. (f) KRT9 protein expression is still elevated in volar compared with nonvolar keratinocytes in both postconfluent and preconfluent conditions, as measured by Western blot (top) and normalized to b-Actin (bottom). n = 3, *P < 0.05. A.U., arbitrary unit; GEO, Gene Expression Omnibus; KRT, Keratin; P, passage.