The energy requirements of melanin granule aggregation and dispersion in the melanophores of anolis carolinensis

✍ Scribed by Horowitz, Samuel B.

• Book ID: 102878000
• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1958
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 835 KB
• Volume: 51
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0095-9898
• DOI: 10.1002/jcp.1030510304

✦ Synopsis

It has long been known that the rapid color changes of the skin of the various poikilothermic vertebrates is, in part, a function of the activity of the melanin pigment-bearing cells, the melanophores. The darkening and lightening of melanophores is due entirely to intracellular pigment movement. The lightening (contraction) of melanophores is due to the aggregation of melanin granules in the cell's perikaryon ; while darkening (expansion) is due to the dispersion of the pigment granules to the periphery of the cell, the dendritic processes. This entire lightening and darkening cycle apparently takes place without appreciable change in the shape o r dimension of the cell.

Somewhere within the cycle of the aggregation and dispersion of melanin granules energy must be expended. The question of whether this energy is utilized by the melanophore to produce expansion, contraction, o r some intermediate state, has been recurrently investigated over a century (Parker, '48). Recently this question has been reinvestigated in isolated frog skin, particularly by the use of metabolic inhibitors