Evaluation of the impact of neoplastic histamine secretion on melanoma progression. Mus musculus

We previously showed that transgenic enhancement of histamine production in B16-F10 melanomas strongly supports tumor growth in C57Bl/6 mice (Cancer Res, 2005 Pos et al.). In this array experiment, gene expression profiles of transgenic mouse melanomas, secreting different amounts of histamine, were compared by whole genome microarrays. Keywords: genetic modification Overall design: By modifying the levels of L-histidine decarboxylase (HDC), the sole enzyme responsible for histamine production, we introduced three novel variants of the B16-F10 mouse melanoma cell line, displaying diminished (B16-F10 HDC-A), unmodified (B16-F10 HDC-M) or enhanced (B16-F10 HDC-S) capacities to produce and secrete histamine. In this experiment, B16-F10 HDC-A, HDC-M, and HDC-S experimental mouse melanomas were compared by analyzing 6-6 tumors in each group. In order to reduce the amount of arrays required, equal amounts of randomly chosen RNA sample pairs were pooled in each group, thus, at the end, each group consisted of 3 pooled tumor samples. All samples were biological replicates, no technical replicates or dye swapping were done. Gene expression patterns of the three tumor groups were compared indirectly, via a common reference samplei n a two-color array design. Arrays shown here represent gene expression patterns of individual tumor samples compared to the reference sample.