BACKGROUND Skin color is a well-recognized adaptive trait and has been studied extensively in humans. Understanding the genetic basis of adaptation of skin color in various populations has many implications in human evolution and medicine. DISCUSSION Impressive progress has been made recently to identify genes associated with skin color variation in a wide range of geographical and temporal p...

Diversity of human appearance and form has intrigued biologists for centuries, but nearly 100 years after the term “genetics’’ was coined by William Bateson in 1906, the genes that underlie this diversity are an unsolved mystery. One of the most obvious phenotypes that distinguish members of our species, differences in skin pigmentation, is also one of the most enigmatic. There is a tremendous ...

The spatial distributions of melanin and hemoglobin in human skin are separated by independent-component analysis of a skin color image. The analysis is based on the skin color model with three assumptions: (1) Spatial variation of color in the skin is caused by two pigments, melanin and hemoglobin; (2) the quantities of the two pigments are mutually independent spatially; and (3) linearity hol...

Sun exposure has been known to cause histological changes in the dermal layer of the skin. Using deterioration in the fine reticular patterning of the epidermal stratum corneum (skin pattern, as measured on the Beagley-Gibson scale) as a proxy measure of histological changes in the dermal layer, previous studies have typically assumed that degradation of skin pattern is largely caused by sun ex...

This work has designed an automated system to recommend clothe for people based on their skin. Skin colors from various races were related with a variety of clothing colors to obtain their harmonization value. This research involve 30 respondents through questionnaire to provide initial views to a variety of colors to match the skin color variation. Input from the respondents is then analyzed t...

Recently admixed populations offer unique opportunities for studying human history and for elucidating the genetic basis of complex traits that differ in prevalence between human populations. Historical records, classical protein markers, and preliminary genetic data indicate that the Cape Verde islands in West Africa are highly admixed and primarily descended from European males and African fe...

The mechanisms that lead to variation in human skin and hair color are not fully understood. To better understand the molecular control of skin and hair color variation, we modulated the expression of Tyrosinase (Tyr), which controls the rate-limiting step of melanogenesis, by expressing a single-copy, tetracycline-inducible shRNA against Tyr in mice. Moderate depletion of TYR was sufficient to...