Melanin is a unique biopolymer that is central to living organisms, yet our understanding of its structure and properties is limited. This heterogeneous polymer has many properties of interest including its wide electromagnetic absorption range and photo protectant ability to shield DNA from damage by UV rays. The Raper-Mason Pathway was proposed 70 years ago and is still where current understanding of melanin comes from, which involves starting from L-Tyrosine and progressing through to a final polymerized melanin. Using a combination of solid-state NMR and electron microscopy to study synthetic eumelanin we have demonstrated this pathway may be more complex than previously considered and incorporates intermediate metabolites. This method for evaluating melanin nanoparticles is now being combined with studies of natural eumelanin from marine organisms. These natural pigments are isolated through an effective extraction method which affords highly pure melanin from tissues using enzymatic treatment and density gradient separation. Integrating these studies allows us to not only have well evaluated standards of various melanins but also obtain pure natural melanin in an efficient manner to study the structure-activity relationship of this important biopolymer.

Unraveling structural diversity within eumelanin pigments

ACS Fall 2021

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