In general, this panel is composed of a number of genes that are losing expression during progression and that have Gene Ontology annotations related to tight junctions, gap junctions, adherens junctions and desmosomes, and an impaired set of processes that link, via intercellular channels and bridges, the cells of the epidermis. Mutations in these genes are linked to a number of skin genetic diseases [157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170] The desmosome are cell-cell adhesive junctions which provide a mechanical coupling between cells. These junctions are found in several epithelial tissues and the decreased assembly of the desmosome has been shown to be a common feature of many epithelial cancers [171, 172] . Plakoglobin helps to connect transmembrane elements to the cytoskeleton [173] . Plakophilin 1 [174] (PKP1, one of the genes in our panel above) is a desmosomal plaque component [175] that stabilizes desmosomal proteins at the plasma membrane [176, 177] and, with desmoplakin [178] , recruits filaments to sites of cell-cell contacts [179] . As a consequence, it has been proposed that the lack of PKP1 increases keratinocyte migration [180] and loss of PKP1 expression in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma may contribute to an invasive phenotypic behaviour [171] , perhaps as a consequence of the impaired recruitment of desmoplakin.