Expression data from macroH2A shRNA lines

Cancer is a disease of both genetic and epigenetic changes. While increasing evidence demonstrates that oncogenic progression entails chromatin-mediated changes such as DNA methylation, the role of histone variants in cancer initiation and progression currently remains unexplored. Here, we report that the histone variant macroH2A (mH2A) suppresses tumour progression of malignant melanoma. We hypothesized that loss of mH2A could contribute to melanoma progression by relieving repression of cell cycle- and metastasis-related genes. To gain insight into the transcriptional state of mH2A1 and mH2A2-deficient cells, we examined their gene expression profiles using Affymetrix microarrays. Murine B16-F1 cells with lentiviral shRNAs against mH2A1 and mH2A2 were generated along with control shRNA (against GFP) and used for the microarray analysis. Two independent biological replicates were used.