How does the biggest organ in our body shield us?
Umbrellas are not just for rain, they also provide shade from the sun. The sun gives off deadly ultraviolet rays which would kill every one of us if we did not have protection. Sunscreen helps, but God provided us with microscopic umbrellas, in fact, millions of them. These umbrellas are melanin. Melanin is what gives us our skin color. Melanin is produced in melanocytes. Once melanin is made, it is packaged into tiny granules which are shipped to the tips of the melanocytes. The skin, or epidermal cells, then “bite off” the tips of these projections.
Once the package is inside the skin epidermal cell, the packages are moved and arranged into dark “caps” or umbrellas over the cell’s nucleus. These umbrellas protect the nucleus from harmful UV light, especially when the cell divides. At this critical time, UV can damage the DNA in the nucleus, resulting in mutations and skin cancer. The umbrellas protect this precious DNA in the nucleus. Our skin contains hundreds of millions of tiny umbrellas containing melanin to protect us from overdoses of the sun’s deadly radiation. God’s protection is more than skin deep. What a great God we have!
(Source: Inspired Evidence Von Vett & Malone– David Menton, Answers Magazine Melanin Umbrellas in Our Skin, Dec. 2010)
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