by Paolo Giacomoni, PhD, Insight Analysis Consulting

The illumination of a building at night depends on a large number of parameters. In the dark, houses can be seen with beautiful illuminated windows, sometimes with beautiful colors. The presenc electrical switch being turned “on.” The intensity and the color of the lights in the windows will depend on the bulbs, the shades, the wallpapers, the individual switches in the rooms and so on.

An Internal Switch

In an analogous way, the presence of pigmentation in human skin depends on a master switch too. When it is “off,” we have the albino phenotype, and when it is “on,” we have a variety of colors t genes.

As a matter of fact, skin pigmentation is the consequence of the transfer of black bodies called melanosomes from the melanocytes in the epidermis to the surrounding keratinocytes. Melanocytes pigmentation requires the participation of specialized enzymes able to make the connection between a dendrite and a keratinocyte. These help the transfer of melanosomes. Melanosomes are ve Melanosomes are assembled first as pre-melanosomes in a peculiar cell compartment called the Golgi apparatus and then, they engulf the tyrosinases, the enzymes able to make melanin.

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