the.com/melanocyte
The cell that tans so your DNA doesn't have to take the hit.
means A skin cell that produces melanin, the pigment that colors skin, hair, and eyes and absorbs UV radiation.
from Built from Greek parts: 'melas' (black, dark) plus 'kytos' (vessel, cell), the same 'kytos' that gives us every other cell-word — leukocyte, cytoplasm, cytology. Coined in the language of 19th-century microscopy, when biologists were busy naming every newly-visible structure by what it did or looked like under the lens.
- location
- Lives in the skin's basal layer, outnumbered by keratinocytes 1 to 36
- function
- Packages melanin into tiny UV-blocking umbrellas called melanosomes
- universal count
- Same density in all races, just makes more or less pigment
- malfunction
- Goes rogue, becomes melanoma, skin cancer's most lethal form