 Now, for perspective, I'm still on the overall anatomy, the chunk of skin that provides us with all the layers of the skin, but again, I already told you we're focusing in on the epidermis, which what kind of tissue is the epidermis made out of? You can do it recall, push, pause, and really try hard to remember the name of this tissue. It was stratified squamous epithelial tissue, and let me break that down for you just a little bit. Stratified means the tissue itself has multiple layers, and we're going to see that really clearly when we look, we're going to zoom in on where the box is in this picture. So stratified tissues have many layers, squamous describes the shape of the cell at the top of the tissue. So the most superficial cells, their shape tells you that it gives you that part of the name of the tissue. So stratified many layers, squamous, squamous it means that the cells on top are flat, epithelial tissue and epithelial tissues line spaces, which do you agree your skin is lining a space like outside of you is this space that is not your skin. So stratified squamous epithelial tissue has, we can like dissect the term and have a sense of what that actually means. Let's zoom in and take a closer look at this stratified squamous epithelial tissue. Do you agree that we have multiple layers here? And remember that this is, I don't know, should we say this is the outside? This is superficial, and this is deep. And we're going toward the dermis. In fact, this right here, the light pink stuff is dermis. It's a different kind of tissue. It's not an epithelial tissue. We're not going to talk about the dermis. Say that for anatomy folks, but we have this entire thing starting here. I don't know. Can you see that line? I feel like that line isn't very clear. Let me try a different color. There. Do you see that line? That's where the stratified squamous epithelial tissue begins. That means that this whole thing is epidermis. Do you agree that there's like a doodoo load of different kinds of cells in that space? Do you also agree? What did I say about where did squamous come from? It comes from the shape of the cells closest to the space. And this shape of these cells, like look at how flat they are. They're flat. They're also dead, but that's another story, also another story for later. They start out not dead and the first cells that we're going to name are the deepest cells in this tissue and they are called basal cells. And I just drew some squares around these guys. These are basal cells. And these guys are responsible for basically giving rise to every other cell. Every other cell you see came from the division, the reproduction of one of these basal cells, with the exception of one other cell that I'm going to show you in just a second. All the other cells, basal cells are generative cells. They produce more cells. Once a basal cell divides and produces more cells, the basal cells stay there. They continue to produce more and more cells. Dude, I should have looked up the fact of like how many pounds of skin slough off of your body every 24 hours or every day or I mean, it's like disturbing how much of your skin sloughs off because it dies. And those basal cells are like, don't worry, I got you slough away. That's cool because I will just regenerate. I know people in my family who are glad that those basal cells continue to regenerate the sloughing off skin. All the cells that the basal cells give rise to are called keratinocytes. Couple things to notice here. First of all, check out the, I don't know, whatever, the last part of that word is site. Keratinocytes often refers to a cell. Melanocyte refers to a cell. Keratinocyte refers to a cell. These cells actually produce A, here we are about to go into some other levels of organization. Keratinocytes produce a protein called keratin. That's interesting. And the protein, the keratin protein that they produce actually ends up killing them, which is how they end up being all dead at the top of this conveyor belt as soon as those basal cells reproduce. They begin this conveyor belt to death where they fill with keratin. And thankfully, the keratin makes us waterproof and it keeps us protected from abrasions. There's all sorts of good things. Thank you, basal cells, for making keratinocytes that die for us. Helpful. But they, they produce that protein keratin in the process. What other cell are you like, dude? Where's the most important cell? Do you see the most important cell? It's, I know that's the wrong color to pick for the most important cell because you cannot see. Let's see if I can circle it in. Does that work better? That, my friends, is our melanocyte. Melanocyte, whatever. The melanocyte, the keratinocyte is a cell site that produces keratin. The melanocyte is a cell site that produces what do you think? True story, the melanocyte produces melanin. And in the next section, we're going to talk about how, how does this cell produce melanin? Okay, come back and let's talk about it.