Endogenous mouse PMEL does not significantly co-localize with late endocytic markers (not shown) and thus the partial co-localization of ectopic hPMEL with LAMP2 might reflect less efficient delivery of this isoform to early stage melanosomes, likely due to the low expression levels attained by infection (see below) and the inability of hPMEL to interact with the mouse isoform as detected by coimmunoprecipitation (data not shown). Here, LAMP2 is linked to infection.