Pluto Bioinformatics

GSE100607: Pigment producing melanocytes as the cells of origin of BRAFV600E-induced mouse cutaneous melanoma

Bulk RNA sequencing

To investigate whether cutaneous melanoma originates from a resident adult melanocyte stem cell (MSC) or a mature melanocyte, we created a model that recapitulates key histopathological features of human melanomagenesis by inducing a BRafV600E-driven melanomagenic program in interfollicular (IF) melanocytes located in mouse tails.; To this end, we sequenced the transcriptome of FACS-sorted individual IFE reporter-positive cells from BRaf/Pten/tdTomato mice, the tails of which had been painted with 4-HT for 31 and 72 days, respectively. These time points were chosen as melanoma cells are exclusively found in the IF epidermis at day 31 (d31) and in both epidermis and dermis at day 72 (d72). Normal IF melanocytes from Tyr::CreERT2/+; ROSA26RLSL-tdTomato/+ were also isolated and profiled; These data indicated that loss of differentiation markers occurs in a subset of targeted epidermal melanoma cells before the onset of dermal invasion and that this event may, at least partly, be a consequence of induction of Zeb1 expression. SOURCE: Sara AibarLaboratory of Computational Biology VIB-KU Leuven