How Do Melanocytes Die?
Phenolic agents are a major cause of occupational vitiligo, or more properly, occupational leukoderma. It has been proposed that pigment cells can develop “autocytotoxicty” when exposed to toxic chemicals, and the biochemistry of these events has been studied, especially with regard to effects on melanization. There is not clear evidence, however, on how toxic phenolic compounds induce cell death in human melanocytes.In this issue, Le Poole et al. (p. 725) report utilization of a very different approach to directly compare genes that are differentially activated or suppressed in melanocytes when the cells are exposed to a phenolic cytotoxic agent. They have used differential mRNA display to directly identify changes in mRNA expression in normal human melanocytes exposed to 4-tertiary butyl phenol (4-TBP) compared with untreated controls. They identified transcriptional activation of the L30 ribosomal protein, possible reflecting altered levels of protein synthesis in general in respons
