Melanocytes respond to UVR not only by producing melanin, but also by proliferating. This is essentially a protective response. We have studied the melanocyte proliferative response after a single UVR exposure to neonatal mice. At 3 days post-UVR in wild-t ...
DICER is a central regulator of microRNA maturation. However, little is known about mechanisms regulating its expression in development or disease. While profiling miRNA expression in differentiating melanocytes, two populations were observed: some upregul ...
Dopachrome tautomerase (Dct) is a critical enzyme in the melanogenesis pathway that isomerizes the intermediate dopachrome to 5,6-dihydroxyindole-2-carboxylic acid (DHICA) and influences the proportion of DHICA monomer incorporated into the 5,6-dihydroxyin ...
We have investigated the therapeutic potential of a prototypic melanoma vaccine based on recombinant adenovirus expressing human dopachrome tautomerase in the B16F10 murine melanoma model. We found that in the presence of a tumor, the magnitude of T-cell i ...
Melanocyte stem cells in the bulge area of hair follicles are responsible for hair pigmentation, and defects in them cause hair graying. Here we describe the process of melanocyte stem cell entry into the quiescent state and show that niche-derived transfo ...
Angiogenesis is the process by which new blood vessels arise from existing ones by the budding out of endothelial cell capillaries from the luminal side of blood vessels. Blood vessel formation is essential for organ development during embryogenesis and is ...
Summary We report on a systematic analysis of genotype-specific melanocyte UVR responses in transgenic mouse melanoma models along with tumour penetrance and comparative histopathology. pRb or p53 pathway mutations cooperated with Nras(Q61K) to transform m ...
Atrial fibrillation is the most common clinical cardiac arrhythmia. It is often initiated by ectopic beats arising from the pulmonary veins and atrium, but the source and mechanism of these beats remains unclear. The melanin synthesis enzyme dopachrome tau ...
Natural killer (NK) cells show enhanced functional competence when they express inhibitory receptors specific for inherited major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) molecules. Current models imply that NK cell education requires an interaction of i ...
