Imagine a skin cream that heals damage occurring throughout the day when your skin is exposed to sunlight or environmental toxins. That's the potential of a synthetic, biomimetic melanin developed by scientists at Northwestern ...
Nov 2, 2023
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Researchers have discovered that mouse skin and skin cells from humans produce pigmentation in response to sunlight on a 48-hour cycle. They observed that exposing skin to ultraviolet light every 2 days yielded darker pigmentation ...
Oct 25, 2018
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Much of the damage that ultraviolet radiation (UV) does to skin occurs hours after sun exposure, a team of Yale-led researchers concluded in a study that was published online Feb. 19 by the journal Science.
Feb 19, 2015
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(Medical Xpress)—Motile cilia are present on the surface of many types of cells. When they are not working properly, respiratory problems, various sensory deficits, and occasionally, even a reversal of placement of the ...
(Medical Xpress)—What makes us happy? Family? Money? Love? How about a peptide? The neurochemical changes underlying human emotions and social behavior are largely unknown. Now though, for the first time in humans, scientists ...
Mar 7, 2013
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A team of geneticists and systems biologists at Stanford University has associated 169 genes that with the production of melanin in the skin, hair and eyes. In their study, reported in the journal Science, the group conducted ...
The leading cause of vision loss in Western countries is age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a deterioration of central vision that begins when droplets of lipids and proteins called lipofuscin accumulate in the retina ...
May 11, 2023
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A team of Brown University researchers found that opsin 3—a protein closely related to rhodopsin, the protein that enables low-light vision—has a role in adjusting the amount of pigment produced in human skin, a determinant ...
May 16, 2019
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Skin colour is one of the most visible and variable traits among humans and scientists have always been curious about how this variation evolved. Now, a study of diverse Latin American populations led by UCL geneticists has ...
Jan 21, 2019
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Newly published research provides the first demonstration of how a genetic mutation associated with a common form of albinism leads to the lack of melanin pigments that characterizes the condition.
Dec 16, 2014
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Melanin i/ˈmɛlənɪn/ (Greek: μέλας, black) is a pigment that is ubiquitous in nature, being found in most organisms (spiders are one of the few groups in which it has not been detected). In animals melanin pigments are derivatives of the amino acid tyrosine. The most common form of biological melanin is eumelanin, a brown-black polymer of dihydroxyindole carboxylic acids, and their reduced forms. All melanins can be considered as derivatives of polyacetylene, since they rely on a polyconiugate structure. Another common form of melanin is pheomelanin, a red-brown polymer of benzothiazine units largely responsible for red hair and freckles. The presence of melanin in the archaea and bacteria kingdoms is an issue of ongoing debate among researchers in the field.
The increased production of melanin in human skin is called melanogenesis. Production of melanin is stimulated by DNA damage induced by UVB-radiation, and it leads to a delayed development of a tan. This melanogenesis-based tan takes more time to develop, but it is long-lasting.
The photochemical properties of melanin make it an excellent photoprotectant. It absorbs harmful UV-radiation (ultraviolet) and transforms the energy into harmless heat through a process called "ultrafast internal conversion". This property enables melanin to dissipate more than 99.9% of the absorbed UV radiation as heat (see photoprotection). This prevents the indirect DNA damage that is responsible for the formation of malignant melanoma and other skin cancers.
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