Animals including humans have beautiful pigments on the body surface. In the pigmentations, melanosomes, specialized organelles for melanin generation, are synthesized in pigment cells called melanocytes and subsequently transferred from melanocytes to surrounding skin and hair keratinocytes. Although to understand melanosome transfer is important for developing cosmetics and pigment biology, molecular and cellular mechanisms of melanosome transfer have long been unclear.
I recently established a novel live imaging technique that enabled to directly analyze melanosome transfer in skin tissue using chicken embryos.I am going to elucidate the whole picture of the intercellular transfer of melanosomes by using the new technique.