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. 2020 Dec 4;21(23):9264. doi: 10.3390/ijms21239264

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© 2020 by the authors.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Schematic representation of melanosome biogenesis in melanocytes. Immature melanosomes stage I is derived from early endosomes. Stage II (immature melanosomes—iMel) is formation of non-pigmented melanosomes containing PMEL fibrils (indicated in green dotted lines). At stage III, melanogenesis begins with translocation of tyrosinase related proteins (TYR—indicated in red dotted lines) from tubular elements of early endosomes. Stage IV marks the maturation of melanosomes (mMel) facilitating melanin deposition. Adaptor protein-3 (AP-3) and Adaptor protein-1 (AP-1) are adaptors for sorting TYR to melanosomes. BLOC-1 and BLOC-2 are regulators of endosome-to-melanosome transport. Rab32/38 are tissue specific proteins which play essential roles in pigmentation.