Expression data from non-pigmented and pigmented mouse melanocytes. Mus musculus

Immortalized, amelanotic melanocytes isolted from skin of Balb/c express enzymatically-inactive tyrosinase due to a homozygous point mutation (TGT->TCT) in tyrosinase gene, resulting in a lack of melanin . To serve as a control cell line, pigmentation was restored in these cells by correcting the point mutation using an RNA-DNA oligonucleotide (kingly gift from Dr. Alexeev Y. Vitali). We used microarray to detail the effect of tyrosinase mutation on gene expression in normal versus mutant melanocytes. Overall design: Pigmented and non-pigmented melanocytes were grown for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. We used both normal and mutant melanocyte in order to obtain expression profiles. We then examined variances in gene expression between the two cell lines.