Abstract
ON the basis of electron microscope investigations of the human hair follicle Birbeck and Mercer1 suggested that pigment granules enter the cortical cells by phagocytosis. Swift2 gave support to this suggestion by illustrating the close association between pigment granules and cortical cell membranes in human hair. During recent investigations on a range of less common animal hairs we have obtained much additional evidence in support of the view that phagocytosis is responsible for the ingestation of pigment granules into cortical cells.
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Birbeck, M. S. C., Mercer, E. H., J. Biophys. Biochem. Cytol., 3, 203 (1956).
Swift, J. A., Nature, 203, 976 (1964).
Dobb, M. G., Nott, J. A., and Sikorski, J., Proc. European Conf. Electron Microscopy, Delft, Pt. II, 664 (1960).
Dobb, M. G., and Sikorski, J., Colloque Structure de la Laine: Bull. Inst. Text. France, 37 (1961).
Dobb, M. G., thesis, Univ. Leeds (1963).
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PIPER, L. Phagocytosis in Mammalian Hair. Nature 213, 596 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1038/213596a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/213596a0
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