Expression profiling of fibroblasts treated with melanosomes

mRNA profiling was performed on primary fibroblasts treated with melanosomes and untreated fibroblasts as control. The aim of this study was to explore whether melanoma-derived mature melanosomes functionally affect primary fibroblasts. A functional gene set enrichment analysis based on the resulting mRNA profiles predicted that an uptake of mature melanosomes by fibroblasts causes increased cell proliferation and cell motility. Expression profiling was performed for 3 replicates of primary human fibroblasts that were treated with mature melanosomes, 1 replicate of fibroblasts treated with early melanosomes and 3 replicates of untreated fibroblasts as controls. Melanosomes were extracted from the human melanoma cell line MNT-1. Fibroblasts were treated with melanosomes for 24h. Fold changes were calculed for fibroblasts treated with mature melanosomes vs. controls. The sample of fibroblasts treated with early melanosomes was considered for the normalization, but not for further analyses. Microarray Unit of the Core Facility Genomics and Proteomics DKFZ