Summary Exposure of human skin to solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR), a powerful carcinogen [1] comprising ~95% UVA and ~5% UVB at the Earth’s surface, promotes melanin synthesis in epidermal melanocytes [2, 3], which protects skin from DNA damage [4, 5]. UVB causes DNA lesions [6] that lead to transcriptional activation of melanin-producing enzymes, resulting in delayed skin pigmentation within days [7]. In contrast, UVA causes primarily oxidative damage [8] and leads to immediate pigment darkening (IPD) within minutes, via an unknown mechanism [9, 10]. No receptor protein directly mediating phototransduction in skin has been identified. Here we demonstrate that exposure of primary human epidermal melanocytes (HEMs) to UVA causes calcium mobilization and early melanin synthesis. Calcium responses were abolished by treatment with G protein or PLC inhibitors, or by depletion of intracellular calcium stores. We show that the visual photopigment rhodopsin [11] is expressed in HEMs and contributes to UVR phototransduction. Upon UVR exposure, significant melanin production was measured within one hour; cellular melanin continued to increase in a retinal- and calcium-dependent manner up to five-fold after 24 hours. Our findings identify a novel UVA-sensitive signaling pathway in melanocytes that leads to calcium mobilization and melanin synthesis, and may underlie the mechanism of IPD in human skin.

Human skin is constantly exposed to solar light containing visible and ultraviolet radiation (UVR), a powerful skin carcinogen. UVR elicits cellular responses in epidermal cells via several mechanisms: direct absorption of short-wavelength UVR photons by DNA, oxidative damage caused by long-wavelength UVR, and, as we recently demonstrated, via a retinal-dependent G protein-coupled signaling pathway. Because the human epidermis is exposed to a wide range of light wavelengths, we investigated whether opsins, light-activated receptors that mediate photoreception in the eye, are expressed in epidermal skin to potentially serve as photosensors. Here we show that four opsins—OPN1-SW, OPN2, OPN3 and OPN5—are expressed in the two major human epidermal cell types, melanocytes and keratinocytes, and the mRNA expression profile of these opsins does not change in response to physiological UVR doses. We detected two OPN3 splice variants present in similar amounts in both cell types and three OPN5 splice isoforms, two of which encode truncated proteins. Notably, OPN2 and OPN3 mRNA were significantly more abundant than other opsins and encoded full-length proteins. Our results demonstrate that opsins are expressed in epidermal skin cells and suggest that they might initiate light–induced signaling pathways, possibly contributing to UVR phototransduction.

Voltage gating of hyperpolarization-activated cation (HCN) channels is potentiated by direct binding of cAMP to a cytoplasmic cAMP-sensing domain (CSD). When unliganded, the CSD inhibits hyperpolarization-dependent opening of the HCN channel gate; cAMP binding relieves this autoinhibition so that opening becomes more favorable thermodynamically. This autoinhibition-relief mechanism is conserved with that of several other cyclic nucleotide receptors using the same ligand-binding fold. Besides its thermodynamic effect, cAMP also modulates the depolarization-dependent deactivation rate by kinetically that is formed by mode shift after prolonged hyperpolarization activation. This hysteretic activation-deactivation cycle is preserved by CSD substitution, but the change in deactivation kinetics of the liganded channel resulting from CSD substitution is not correlated with the change in autoinhibition properties. Thus the liganded and the unliganded forms of the CSD respectively provide the structural determinants for open-state trapping and autoinhibition, such that two distinct mechanisms for cAMP regulation can operate in one receptor. HCN channels are tetramers of homologous subunits; each subunit has six membrane-spanning helices (S1-S6) homologous to those of voltage-gated potassium channels, with a voltagesensing domain in S1-S4 (4). Hyperpolarization drives inward movement of the positively charged S4 (5), which is coupled to opening of the pore gate formed by the cytoplasmic C-terminal ends of the four S6 helices in the tetramer (6). S6 in each subunit is followed by an 80-residue "C-linker" with an unusual multihelix fold (7), then the cAMP-binding fold and a poorly conserved "extreme C-terminal" region. The C-linker and cAMP-binding fold together can be viewed as one "cAMP-sensing domain" (CSD; see Fig. 1A, Top), based on domain stability (7) and the C-linker's functional importance (8).Cyclic AMP binding potentiates hyperpolarization-dependent activation of HCN channels (9). That is, cAMP increases thermodynamic stability of the open channel relative to the closed channel, so that the voltage needed for half-maximal activation (V 1∕2 ) becomes less negative. A similar V 1∕2 shift can be produced by deleting the CSD through enzymatic or genetic truncation (10, 11). This establishes a classical autoinhibition mechanism (12) as the basis for cAMP regulation of HCN channels, in analogy with PKA (13) and EPAC (14). Thus the unliganded ("apo") CSD inhibits an intrinsic activity of the channel, and the liganded ("holo") form of the CSD has weakened or nonexistent capability for this inhibition, so that cAMP binding mimics CSD deletion. Because the autoinhibition-relief model attributes specific regulatory function to the apo CSD rather than the holo CSD, we introduce the designation "apo-driven" for this mechanism type. In a "holo-driven" mechanism, by contrast, the presence of the CSD with bound ligand would be required for a particular HCN channel structure that achieves optimal activation. A holodriven mechanis...