follicle

He had also managed to pull out some hair follicles, with a view to them being used in a DNA test.

Just over a month later, it had all gone and Fisher was diagnosed with alopecia, an auto-immune condition that destroys the hair follicles.

What the teams found was that in the cells responsible for giving a cat its skin, hair follicles and eyes their colour - melanocytes - one gene, ARHGAP36, was much more active.

Individual hair follicles were punched in by artists using a tiny needle.

Alopecia is caused by the immune system mistakenly attacking hair follicles at the root of the hair, causing it to fall out.