Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2019 Sep 20;10:590. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2019.00590

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

Copyright © 2019 Coon, Fu, Hartley, Holtzclaw, Mays, Kelly, Kelley, Mullikin, Rath, Savastano and Klein.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

PMC Copyright notice

A hypothetical model based on scRNA-Seq depicting differences in melatonin synthesis between α- and β-pinealocytes. (A,B) The relative strength of a pathway module is indicated by opacity; greater opacity represents a more active pathway. (A) Conversion of N-acetylserotonin (NAS) to melatonin in α-pinealocytes is enhanced by higher ASMT activity and increased S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) availability, which is boosted by greater ATP availability. Increased ATP availability reflects increased ATP production from oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos); this is inferred by greater expression of mitochondrial genes in α-pinealocytes. ATP availability also results from reduced consumption by protein synthesis, as inferred by decreased ribosomal transcriptome in α-pinealocytes. (B) β-Pinealocytes do not have the same enhancements as α-pinealocytes. (C) N-Acetylserotonin (NAS) that is not converted to melatonin in β-pinealocytes enters the α-pinealocyte by passive diffusion through membranes and gap junctions (shown in blue) and is converted to melatonin, thereby maximizing melatonin production. Reproduced from Mays et al. (43). This figure and associated legend is published with permission of the original publisher under license CC0.1.0.