I figured I would just note this, another skin color study:
...We previously reported significant associations of two coding region polymorphisms with hair, skin, and eye color in Caucasians. Here we characterize the promoter region of MATP [SLC45A2] identifying two new transcription start sites and a novel duplication...A total of 700 individuals from five different population groups (529 Caucasians, 38 Asians, 46 African Americans, 47 Australian Aborigines, and 40 Spanish Basques) were genotyped for known promoter polymorphisms...Allele frequencies of all three polymorphisms were significantly different between population groups. In Caucasians, the -1721G, +dup, and -1169A alleles were significantly associated with olive skin color. The three promoter polymorphisms were found to be in linkage disequilibrium with each other but not with the two previously reported coding region polymorphisms. Functional analyses in a melanoma cell line showed that the promoter haplotype -1721G, +dup, -1169A significantly decreased MATP transcription. This report provides further evidence for the involvement of MATP in normal pigmentation variation by identifying associations between MATP alleles and skin color variation in Caucasians and demonstrating a functional significance of these polymorphisms.
Related: A post on SLC24A5 and one on OCA2. Earlier commentary on the lead author's work (a correction from her). Convergent evolution on skin color.
