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
Biological pigment that are within the photosynthetic structure are more common, but complicated. Pigment-protein complexes that are outside of the photosynthetic system are less common, but have a simpler structure. For example, there are only two of these blue astaxanthin-proteins in the jellyfish, "Velella velella", contains only about 100 carotenoids per complex. A common carotenoid in animals is astaxanthin, which gives off a purple-blue and green pigment. Astaxanthin’s color is formed by creating complexes with proteins in a certain order. For example, the crustochrin has approximately 20 astaxanthin molecules bonded with protein. When the complexes interact by exciton-exciton interaction, it lowers the