Melanin News and Research

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In humans, melanin is the primary determinant of skin color. It is also found in hair, the pigmented tissue underlying the iris of the eye, and the stria vascularis of the inner ear. In the brain, tissues with melanin include the medulla and zona reticularis of the adrenal gland, and pigment-bearing neurons within areas of the brainstem, such as the locus coeruleus and the substantia nigr

Study: Turning off molecular switch could help treat melanoma

Melanoma accounts for only about 1% of skin cancers but leads to most of the skin cancer-related deaths.

20 May 2021

Study finds an amyloid link between melanoma and Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder and melanoma is a type of skin cancer but on the surface, these disorders do not seem to have much in common.

8 Apr 2021

Scientists detect genomic DNA changes even in sun-protected skin

Researchers have quantified the diverse types of genomic DNA variations that take place in skin cells and found that mutations from UV light is common.

15 Jan 2021

Plant amyloids could improve nutritional value of plant seeds, reduce allergenicity of legume seeds

Thanks to this work, as the journal Trends in Plant Science recently noted, it is now known that functional amyloids serve biological functions in representatives of almost all large groups of living organisms: bacteria, archaea, animals, fungi, and plants.

3 Dec 2020

Risk for melanoma could be estimated by DNA mutation count

Risk for melanoma, the most deadly skin cancer, can be estimated long before detection of any suspicious moles, according to a UC San Francisco scientist who led a new study to detect DNA mutations in individual skin cells.

8 Oct 2020

Scientists Double Understanding Of Genetic Risk Of Melanoma

A global collaboration of scientists has more than doubled the known number of regions on the human genome that influence the risk of developing melanoma.

28 Apr 2020