Melanocytes are the cells in mammals that produce pigment (melanin), colouring the hair, skin and irises. They develop from unpigmented precursors, melanoblasts, and are located in the bottom layer of the skin’s epidermis.
The cell lines deposited with CancerTools.org are immortal melanocyte, melanoblast, and neural-crest stem cell lines derived from embryonic mouse skin. These mutant cell lines are used to study the actions of mutated genes, which affect many body systems besides pigment cells. To date, these cell lines have been used in research on topics including cell differentiation, organelle biosynthesis and transport, protein transport, growth control, cancer and many others.
These cell lines therefore not only add value to many areas of pigment cell research including cell biology, developmental biology, molecular biology, genetics, microscopy, physiology, pathophysiology, ageing and cancer, but also to research involving most major organ systems – eyes, ears, and blood, nervous, respiratory, digestive, excretory and skeletal systems, and disorders such as inflammation, thrombosis and allergy among others.
Colour mutations in mice often have an orthologous mutation in humans with associated pathological effects. There is ready interchange between the advances in pigmentary genetics in the mouse and human, which increases the relevance of these cell lines. Thus, a very broad range of body systems, cellular mechanisms and disorders is addressed by this collection of cell lines.
The majority of cell lines with pigmentary mutations were derived from the C57BL/6J strain mice to exclude confounding differences due to strain background. This is a benefit over human cell lines that have many polymorphisms that can affect biological processes independent of known mutations. Several melanocyte (melan-Ink4a-Arf) lines on the C57BL/6J strain background (genotype a/a) were deposited with CancerTools.org. These and some other deposited lines have mutations at the Ink4a-Arf locus that make spontaneous immortalisation routine. Other lines were derived by rare spontaneous immortalisation. Melan-Ink4a-Arf lines are used in applications like the widely used cell line melan-a that immortalised spontaneously. When mutant cell lines were established from mice of other backgrounds, the corresponding wild-type cell lines were established from littermate controls.