Brightly Colored Pigmentation in Lower Vertebrates: Wonder Searching its Mechanisms and Significance in the Context of Phylogeny

Abstract

This is a biographical sketch of my research and its related personal episodes with respect to brightly colored pigmentation in lower vertebrates. It includes a brief story of the studies on; (a) pterinosomes as a specific site of pteridine deposition in xanthophores or erythrophores of fish and amphibians, (b) a mosaic phenotype of chromatophores occurring in the reptiles and its implication for their developmental origin and differentiation mechanisms, (c) erythrophoroma as a tumor of erythrophores in goldfish, (d) the pluripotentials of erythrophoroma cells for expression of neural crest-derived characters in vitro, (e) pigment disorders occurring in hatchery-raised flounders and (f) recognition of pigment cell types by murine tyrosinase genes transfected into an orange-colored variant of medaka fish. Some of the personal affairs associated with the history of the Japanese community for pigment cell research were described to illustrate the background of these studies.

Partial characterization of jumbo squid skin pigment extract and its antioxidant potential in a marine oil system

“…The information obtained by the solubility experiments and the spectroscopy analyses (UV–Vis and FT‐IR) suggests that the compounds extracted using acetic acid–ethanol solution from the jumbo squid skin are composed of an ommochrome‐type pigment. Our data are similar to data from previous isolation analysis focused on fish and amphibians species . To confirm ommochromes in the present extract, further research is necessary, which includes chromatographic separation and purification followed by identification using advanced analytical tools.…”

Mechanisms for reaching the differentiated state: Insights from neural crest-derived melanocytes

“…Melanocytes transfer melanin pigment to surrounding cells to color hair and skin (reviewed in[6]). Vertebrates without fur, such as amphibians and fish, melanophores, generate diverse pigment patterns along with other neural crest-derived pigment cell types, including yellow xanthophores and iridescent iridophores (reviewed in [7, 8]). Melanophores and other chromatophores can rapidly change pigment distribution resulting in color adaptation, warning signals, and mating signs important for camouflage, predator evasion and sexual selection (reviewed in [9]).…”