Chapter 7, Problem 15PIAT

Summary Introduction

To review:

The impact of autophagy process to differ between individuals with darker skin and those with lighter skin.

Introduction:

Autophagy is a mechanism of cell death, where cell undergoes degradation and cytoplasmic constituents, cell debris, and cell organelles of damaged cells are cleared from the body system. Autophagy is the self-destruction of the damaged cell organelles and cytoplasmic entities in the lysosomes. Even without being exposed to sunlight, humans exhibit a wide range of skin colors due to differences in the abundance of melanosomes. A recent hypothesis to address this difference is that autophagy plays a role in these differences.