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Figure 2. T-oligos and UVB comparably up-regulate expression of melanogenic proteins and increase epidermal pigmentation in human explants. A) Double Tyr/Mel5 (+) cells [yellow stained; yellow color represents colocalization of green = tyrosinase (+) and red = Mel5 (+) cells] in the basal layer, representing epidermal melanocytes. The dotted white line indicates the dermo-epidermal junction as visualized by light microscopy. B) Quantification of double Tyr/Mel5 (+) nuclei. C) Adjacent sections of the same explants shown in Fig. 2
A were processed for Fontana-Masson silver staining. D) Quantification of epidermal melanin content. Epidermal melanin content was quantified by selecting an epidermal area (excluding stratum corneum) and obtaining computer assisted/calculated data for percent black (black represents epidermal melanin) in at least 3–5 randomly selected areas of 100 µm of linear epidermis in explants from 3 donors/treatment condition for each time point. D, diluent; T, T-oligo, U, UVB.
