Dark skin gives seven to eightfold protection against DNA damage, but even the darkest skin colour cannot protect against all damage to DNA. Dark skin offers great protection against UVR because of its eumelanin content, the UVR-absorbing capabilities of large melanosomes, and because eumelanin can be mobilized faster and brought to the surface of the skin from the depths of the epidermis. For the same body region, light- and dark-skinned individuals have similar numbers of melanocytes (there is considerable variation between different body regions), but pigment-containing organelles, called melanosomes, are larger and more numerous in dark-skinned individuals. Keratocytes from dark skin cocultured
The Painted Skin "a typical piece of moral didacticism that denounces sexual promiscuity, extols faithfulness, and endorses belief in karma and retribution." "The Painted Skin" utilises both the "zhiguai" and "chuanqi" styles of writing in bringing out "the ghost's critical and creative writing", whereas the complexity of prose parallels the "cultural ramifications of the ghost." Skin is a major plot device in "The Painted Skin", serving as a "path between the separate worlds of human and animal, or the natural and the supernatural". Reality versus perception of it is another overarching issue; what Wang deems to be a pretty female is in fact