Deducing Melanin Biosynthesis and Supramolecular Organization
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Dhairavi Shah
CoPIs:
Dhaara Shah
College:
The Dorothy and George Hennings College of Science, Mathematics, and Technology
Major:
Biotechnology/Molecular Biology
Faculty Research Advisor(s):
Subhasish Chatterjee
Abstract:
Melanin is a class of natural pigments responsible for structural coloration in animals, plants, and microorganisms, and the pigments are generated through the enzyme-catalyzed oxidation of catecholamines and amino acid-based precursors. Three forms of melanin are found in the human body: eumelanin, pheomelanin, and neuromelanin. Notably, different precursors produce different kinds of polymeric melanins. For example, the most common precursor, tyrosine, produces eumelanin, which gives a brown-to-black color pigment. On the other hand, pheomelanin is derived from a combination of tyrosine and cysteine and gives a yellow-to-red color pigment. Furthermore, biosynthetic melanins exhibit biomedical applications such as serving as a drug-delivery system, antioxidants in the skin, and cancer therapeutics. Biosynthetic melanin is also valuable in the industry, where it can be used as optically active 2D hybrid materials for biosensing, reinforcers for adhesive hydrogel materials, and as free radical scavengers for soil remediation. The exact polymeric structure of melanin has yet to be discovered because its chemically heterogeneous assembly is disordered and elusive. Our experimental project aims to study enzyme-catalyzed melanin synthesis under cell-free conditions and determine its supramolecular organization using high-resolution spectroscopic and computational methods. The current results illustrate the structural heterogeneity of pheomelanin-like polymeric materials, paving the way for comprehensive structural characterization to shed light on the macromolecular architecture of hybrid pigments.