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The melanocyte-keratin mystery revisited: neither normal human epidermal nor hair follicle melanocytes express keratin 16 or keratin 6 in situ
British Journal of Dermatology, 06/11/09

Paus R et al. - Human epidermal or hair follicle melanocytes do not express K16 and/or K6 while residing in their natural habitat.

Exclusive Author Commentary
Ralf Paus, 06/14/09

Keratins are among the most important proteins in all epithelial cells, where keratins are essential for structural stability of the epithelium and for multiple other keratinocyte functions. Moreover, keratins are considered to be hallmark proteins indicating the epithelial nature of a cell, e.g. epidermal keratinocytes. However, several reports have suggested that keratins can be expressed also by non-epithelial cells, namely under conditions of malignant growth (e.g. melanoma) or under in vitro conditions (e.g. cultured epidermal melanocytes). One report even has suggested that normal human skin melanocytes can express keratin proteins while residing in their natural habitat, i.e. the basal cell layer of the epidermis. If true, this paradigm-breaking finding would have a major impact on our understanding of the uniqueness of the keratin family as a feature of normal epithelial cell biology, and would change current dermatopathology practice, which uses keratins as specific markers for normal and malignant epithelial cells. By utilizing different, well-controlled immunohistological visualization techniques we now demonstrate that, contrary to this prior report, normal human melanocytes in situ do not express keratin 6 or its partner protein, keratin 16, within normal human epidermis or hair follicles, thus validating the old convention that normal human melanocytes do not express keratins. Therefore, at least within normal human skin, melanocytes can still be distinguished by their absence of keratin expression.

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