Latent precursors or stem cells of neural crest origin are present in a variety of post-embryonic tissues. Although these cells are of biomedical interest for roles in human health and disease, their potential evolutionary significance has been underappreciated. As a first step towards elucidating the contributions of such cells to the evolution of vertebrate form, we investigated the relative ...

Skin pigment pattern formation in zebrafish requires pigment-cell autonomous interactions between melanophores and xanthophores, yet the molecular bases for these interactions remain largely unknown. Here, we examined the dali mutant that exhibits stripes in which melanophores are intermingled abnormally with xanthophores. By in vitro cell culture, we found that melanophores of dali mutants hav...

Pigment patterns of organisms have invoked strong interest from not only biologists but also, scientists in many other fields. Zebrafish is a useful model animal for studying the mechanism of pigment pattern formation. The zebrafish stripe pattern is primarily two types of pigment cells: melanophores and xanthophores. Previous studies have reported that interactions among these pigment cells ar...

Previous studies have shown that pigment granule dispersion and aggregation in melanophores of the African cichlid, Tilapia mossambica, are regulated by protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation, respectively (Rozdzial, M. M., and L. T. Haimo. 1986. Cell. 47:1061-1070). The present studies suggest that calcineurin, a Ca2+/calmodulin-stimulated phosphatase, is the endogenous phosphatase that...

Vertebrate pigment cells are derived from neural crest cells and are a useful system for studying neural crest-derived traits during post-embryonic development. In zebrafish, neural crest-derived melanophores differentiate during embryogenesis to produce stripes in the early larva. Dramatic changes to the pigment pattern occur subsequently during the larva-to-adult transformation, or metamorpho...

Colour patterns are a prominent feature of many animals and are of high evolutionary relevance. In zebrafish, the adult pigment pattern comprises alternating stripes of two pigment cell types, melanophores and xanthophores. How the stripes are defined and a straight boundary is formed remains elusive. We find that mutants lacking one pigment cell type lack a striped pattern. Instead, cells of o...

About 20% of xiphophorin fish (Xiphophorus maculatus) dermal melanophores which were cultured in monolayer for 5 to 10 days responded to light directly, exhibiting reversible melanosome aggregation within a few minutes. In order to determine the spectral sensitivity for the light-response, absorbance changes due to the light-induced melanosome aggregation were measured on single melanophores in...

Drug discovery in skin pharmacotherapy is an enormous, continually expanding field. Researchers are developing novel and sensitive pharmaceutical products and drugs that target specific receptors to elicit concerted and appropriate responses. The pigment-bearing cells called melanophores have a significant contribution to make in this field. Melanophores, which contain the dark brown or black p...

The present study was carried out to determine the effects of the seed skin extract of A. hypogaea along with active ingredient pure Resveratrol on the isolated dorsal skin melanophores of the toad Bufo melanostictus.The skin melanophores of the B. melanostictus, were assayed using the mean melanophore size index and their responses were recorded in the presence of various concentrations of the...