Melanins are dark, generally black, biological macromolecules
composed of various types of phenolic or indolic
monomer, usually complexed with protein, and often with
carbohydrates as well. Melanins are produced by microbes,
animals, protozoans, and plants. While the types of monomers
can vary from organism to organism, and the structure
of intact melanin polymers is little understood, biological
substances have historically been classified as melanins
largely on the basis of some generally recognized physical
and chemical properties (Nicolaus et al. 1964).
There is still considerable contention about the precise
definition of a melanin, which has tended to reflect the intractability
of many black or dark natural pigments toward
analysis, thus the following statement by Jacobson and
Millot (1953) quoted by Prota (1992), “although chemical
tests specific for melanins are nonexistent, it is possible to
identify, at least provisionally, a naturally occurring brown
or black pigment as a melanin, provided that it shows certain
characteristics, namely resistance to solvents, bleaching
when subjected to the action of oxidants, and the capacity to
reduce directly ammoniacal solutions of silver nitrate”. The
generally accepted (Nicolaus et al. 1964) chemical criteria
we use to define a fungal pigment as a melanin are as follows:
black colour, insolubility in cold or boiling water and
organic solvents, resistance to degradation by hot or cold
concentrated acids, bleaching by oxidizing agents such as
hydrogen peroxide, and solubilization and degradation by
hot alkali solutions. This recalcitrant property of melanins
has long been used to purify them i.e., treatment of the sample
with hot solvents and acids to degrade away virtually every
other form of biological structure, with the assumption
that whatever was left was substantially melanin.