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Science 16 December 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5755, p. 1737
DOI: 10.1126/science.310.5755.1737e
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This Week in Science

Little is known about the specific genes that contribute to the variations in human skin color. An exciting clue has now emerged from an unlikely source, a tiny aquarium fish. Working with a mutant line of zebrafish called golden, whose stripes are paler than those in wild-type fish, Lamason et al. (p. 1782; see the cover and the news story by Balter) found that the altered pigmentation was caused by a mutation in the slc24A5 gene, which encodes a protein potentially involved in cation exchange. The gene is highly conserved in vertebrates, and expression of the human gene in the golden zebrafish restored wild-type pigmentation. European populations carry a slightly different version of the slc24A5 gene than do African and East Asian populations. A genetic polymorphism that changes one amino acid in the coding region of the gene correlates with skin pigmentation levels, which suggests that slc24A5 may contribute to skin color in humans.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)