Because human epidermal melanocytes (HEMs) provide critical protection against skin cancer, sunburn, and photoaging, a genome-wide perspective of gene expression in these cells is critical to understanding human skin physiology. In this study we performed high throughput sequencing of HEMs to obtain a complete data set of transcript sizes, abundances, and splicing. As expected, we found that melanocyte specific genes that function in pigmentation were among the highest expressed genes. We analyzed the receptor, ion...