Planned intervention: On Wednesday April 3rd 05:30 UTC Zenodo will be unavailable for up to 2-10 minutes to perform a storage cluster upgrade.
Published October 1, 1996 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Tachibana M, Takeda K, Nobukuni Y, Urabe K, Long JE, Meyers KA, Aaronson SA, Miki TEctopic expression of MITF, a gene for Waardenburg syndrome type 2, converts fibroblasts to cells with melanocyte characteristics. Nat Genet 14: 50-54

Description

MITF (microphthalmia-associated transcription factor) encodes a transcription factor with a basic-helix-loop-helix-zipper (bHLH-Zip) motif. MITF mutations occur in patients with Waardenburg syndrome type 2, a disorder associated with melanocyte abnormalities. Here we show that ectopic expression of MITF converts NIH/3T3 fibroblasts into cells with characteristics of melanocytes. MITF transfectants formed foci of morphologically altered cells, which resemble those induced by oncogenes, but did not exhibit malignant phenotypes. Instead, they contained dendritic cells that express melanogenic marker proteins such as tyrosinase and tyrosinase-related protein 1. Most cloned cells of MITF transfectants exhibited dendritic morphology and expressed melanogenic markers, but such properties were not observed in cells transfected with closely related TFE3 cDNA. Our findings indicate that MITF is critically involved in melanocyte differentiation.

Files

article.pdf

Files (930.7 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:c78cca06371498c7a76949744ad7490e
930.7 kB Preview Download