Analysis of genes regulated by FoxD3 in B16-F10 mouse melanoma cells. Mus musculus

We wished to examine the genes regulated by FoxD3 in pigment cells to gain understanding in how FoxD3 represses melanoblast specification in the neural crest. For technical reasons, we could not use neural crest cells, so we used melanoma cells, since they are derived from neural crest cells. To this end, we transfected B16-F10 mouse melanoma cells with constructs expressing FoxD3, or FoxD3-VP16, in which the C-terminal portion of FoxD3 (which contains the transcriptional repression domain) has been replaced by the VP16 transcriptional activation domain. Overall design: The base vector used for these studies was pMES, which expresses the gene of interest under control of the chick beta-actin promoter. EGFP is also expressed from the bicistronic mRNA through the use of an IRES. B16-F10 cells were transfected with either empty pMES, pFoxD3 (which contains FoxD3 inserted into pMES), or pFoxD3-VP16 (similar to pFoxD3, except that the C-terminal portion of FoxD3, which contains the transcriptional repression domain, has been replaced by the transcriptional activation domain of VP16). 24 hours after transfection, EGFP-positive cells were collected by FACS and those cells were subjected to microarray analysis.