What is the difference between normal skin, a freckle, a mole, and melanoma?
In: Biology
normal skin is just… skin. Not sure what you want me to say about that. A freckle is a cluster of normal skin cells where the cells just have more pigment than the surrounding skin. A mole is a skin lesion that contains higher than usual concentrations of pigment and the pigment cells themselves are different than normal skin pigment cells. Moles can be congenital (existing at birth or acquired. They are usually harmless. Melanoma is a cancer of the pigment-containing cells in the skin.
A mole is a benign neoplasm. It does not grow or grows very slowly, it stays in place and does not infiltrate other parts of the body. If a mole starts to do all those bad things, it becomes a melanoma, which is a malignant neoplasm, also known as cancer.
Your skin has cells called melanocytes which produce some black/brownish stuff called melanin. This is what gives moles and freckles their color. When melanocytes make melanin, it just transferred to nearby cells that would otherwise be mostly clear (these cells are called keratinocytes and are the most numerous cell in the top layer of your skin, the part you see when you look at your skin). When one of these cells produces a lot of melanin, it spreads to nearby cells, making a freckle. Sometimes, in one area, you may have a lot of melanocytes right next to each other; they’re not producing a lot of melanin, there is just a lot of those cells all next to one another. This is a mole. Sometimes when those cells replicate uncontrollably, we may call it melanoma which refers to a cancer of this specific cell type.
Latest Answers