Melanin from Jurassic-era mollusk could lead to new tool for cancer diagnosis
(Phys.org) —In a world where things seem to change overnight, melanin seems to stay essentially the same for more than 160 million years, a new study has found. Melanin is the biological pigment that determines an animal's color, and is currently not very well understood. In the new study, scientists have found that a type of melanin called eumelanin from a Jurassic-era mollusk produces a signature when optically excited that is nearly identical to that of the optically excited eumelanin from its modern counterpart, Sepia officinalis, or the common cuttlefish. Because melanin survives so long, an analysis of the melanin from old cancerous tissue samples could give researchers a useful tool for predicting the spread of melanoma skin cancer in humans.