A study by Bonilla et al. (2021) on DNA methylation (DNAm) as a potential mediator between pigmentation genes, pigmentary traits, and skin cancer showed that SPATA2L had a potential pleiotropic association with the phenotypes of skin color and black hair since these traits colocalized with the DNAm site near the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene are known to be responsible for coat color variations in cattle (Goud et al., 2021). Here, SPATA2L is linked to skin neoplasm.