Ta-Nehisi Coates

With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.

American Journalist

Christie Brinkley

Whenever I wore a bathing suit, I kept a sarong around my hips that went halfway down my thighs. The tops of my thighs are like baby skin. Where the sarong ended, I can see sun damage: I've got dark spots and places where there is no melanin. The spots are not pretty, so I encourage everyone to protect their skin from the sun.

American Model

Steve King

Our focus on melanin and people's skins - can't we talk about the diversity of ideology? Can't we look at people for their minds and what they can contribute? And I'd like to see us go more toward a respect for people's ability to contribute, and I actually want to get to a society where we disregard race.

American Politician

John Boyega

We see through the eyes of children that they're not talking about race the way we grown folks are. They're not talking about color or how much melanin is in someone's skin.

British Actor

Zadie Smith

Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count.

British Novelist

Hasan Minhaj

I look like a melanin version of Chris Hayes.

American Actor

Primarily used in science or medicine to explain skin, hair, and eye color variations.

Science Context

Melanin increases with sun exposure, which tans the skin.

Sun Exposure

Conversations about melanin can touch on race and ethnicity; sensitivity is important.

Cultural Sensitivity

 it's simply because they wanted to keep us alive. All of my black friends were raised with the same message, the talk, given to us when we became old enough to be mistaken for a nail ready to be hammered to the ground, when people made our melanin synonymous with something to be feared. But what does it do to a child

How to raise a Black son...

 Human skin produces a pigment called melanin that protects us from the filtered radiation on Earth. Melanin exists in many forms across species, and some melanin-expressing fungi use the pigment to convert radiation into chemical energy. Instead of trying to shield the human body,

Could we survive...

 all of these sausage shapes there are mulana somes and in a living feather there will be full of the chemical melanin which which in fact gives the color and these sausage shaped ones are a sure indicator of a particular kind of melanin which is the one that gives a

The Colour of Dinosaurs...

 king penguin astonishing he jokingly said it's a one in a zillion kind of mutation and scientifically calls it very rare he explains that typically melanistic birds will have white spots where melanin pigmentation has failed to color the feathers but it's extremely

Mutant All-Black Penguin...

 and form a harder layer that's difficult for water or microbes to cross. Our keratinocytes also synthesize vitamin D from the sun, which is vital for our health. Other important cells in the epidermis include melanocytes, which produce melanin or our skin pigment,

5 skin health myths to...

 it would be infinitely better than what we already have, which is just the melanin in our skin. Using the tools of synthetic biology, we can harness Deinococcus radiodurans' ability to thrive under otherwise very lethal doses of radiation.

How humans could evolve...

 other important functions in our bodies so living at the equator we got lots and lots of ultraviolet radiation and the melanin this wonderful complex ancient polymer compound in our skin served as a superb natural sunscreen this polymer is

Breaking the illusion of...

 But in bird feathers, melanin isn't simply a dye. It forms hollow nanostructures called melanosomes which can shine in all the colors of the rainbow. To understand how that works, it helps to remember some things about light.

How do we know what...

 and myriad other important functions in our bodies. So, living at the equator, we got lots and lots of ultraviolet radiation and the melanin -- this wonderful, complex, ancient polymer compound in our skin --

Nina Jablonski breaks...

 The key to survival lay in their own personal sunscreen manufactured beneath the melanin. The type and amount of melanin in your skin determines whether you'll be more or less protected from the sun.