In Oriental countries, such as China, Korea and Japan, a female beauty criterion since ancient times has been a face with fair skin, and the admiration of women with young, healthy, bright and fair skin has created a whitening cosmetics market. The color of human skin and hair is determined by a number of factors. Biosynthesis of the melanin pigment, namely melanogenesis, is the most important ...

Photoacoustic tomography is a hybrid modality based on optical absorption excitation and ultrasonic detection. It is sensitive to melanin, one of the primary absorbers in skin. For cells that do not naturally contain melanin, melanin production can be induced by introducing the gene for tyrosinase, the primary enzyme responsible for expression of melanin in melanogenic cells. Optical resolution...

The authors examined spectrophotometrically the ability of drugs to bind with ocular acid-insoluble melanin. Each drug, at 5 X 10(-5) M, was incubated at 37 degrees C for 8 hr with 4 mg of melanin in 20 mM potassium phosphate buffer (pH 7.4 and 8.0) or in 20 mM acetate buffer (pH 4.8). The authors findings showed that chloroquine, thioridazine, befunolol, pindolol, daunomycin, and 5-fluorouraci...

Melanin is a pigment that determines the skin/hair color and protects human skin from UV rays. The synthesis of melanin complex process regulated by variety enzymes, signaling pathways, transcription factors. Among them, metabolic utilization fatty acids in mitochondria considered one main sources energy. extra oxidase stress produced mitochondrial has thought to be vital factor for pathogenesi...

We reported earlier the delivery of antiangiogenic single chain antibodies by using oncolytic vaccinia virus strains to enhance their therapeutic efficacy. Here, we provide evidence that gene-evoked production of melanin can be used as a therapeutic and diagnostic mediator, as exemplified by insertion of only one or two genes into the genome of an oncolytic vaccinia virus strain. We found that ...

In development of cosmetic essence, measurement of melanin distribution is required to evaluate the effect of cosmetic essences. However, exact measurement of the melanin distribution is very difficult because it is affected by other pigmentations. In this paper, the decrease of melanin component is analyzed by extracting the melanin distribution from digital color images. The independent compo...

Free radicals in the human organism play an important role during living processes [1]. Free radicals are formed in tissues in natural biological conditions, at pathological stages and also as a result of pharmaceutical interactions or physical factors [1, 7, 9, 26]. The extraordinary high contents of free radicals (~ 1017–1021 spin/g) characterize melanin biopolymers [5, 8, 10, 13, 16–18, 22, ...

Certain fungi thrive in highly radioactive environments including the defunct Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Cryptococcus neoformans (C. neoformans), which uses L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) to produce melanin, was used here to investigate how gamma radiation under aqueous aerobic conditions affects the properties of melanin, with the aim of gaining insight into its radioprotective role. Ex...

PURPOSE To study melanogenesis by cultured human uveal melanocytes, and the relationship between melanin production by uveal melanocytes in vitro with the degree of iris pigmentation in vivo. METHODS Melanin content, melanin production, and tyrosinase activity of cultured uveal melanocytes derived from eyes of various iris color were measured at different stages of cultivation. RESULTS Cult...

color and plays an important role in the prevention of suninduced skin injury. Melanin biosynthesis proceeds through a complex series of enzymatic and chemical reactions in melanocytes. Synthesis of melanin starts from the conversion of the amino acid L-tyrosine to dopaquinone by tyrosinase, the enzyme catalyzing the rate-limiting step for melanin biosynthesis. This tyrosinase process is involv...