BMC Seminar Monday, 15th August at 12:00 Room 201 Læknagarður

Speaker: Dr. Kritika Kirty, Project Associate at the Laboratory of Eukaryotic Gene Expression,
School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.

Title: Dissecting Transcriptional Regulatory Networks Involved in Melanogenesis

Abstract: Skin and coat color variations, caused by differences in the abundance and ratio of melanin is one of the most distinguishable features of vertebrates. We carried out analysis of microarray data to identify putative TFs and carried out siRNA-based silencing of the candidate TFs to uncover the transcriptional regulatory networks controlling melanogenesis. Further, in order to understand the complete repertoire of global transcriptomic changes occurring during the dynamic process of melanogenesis, we have employed a discovery based platform involving a tunable model of melanogenesis using a chemo-genomics approach. To induce melanogenesis, we exposed the mouse B16-F10 melanoma cells for different duration of treatment to two small molecules IBMX and forskolin, known activators of cAMP-PKA pathway.  Using genome-wide microarray analysis we identified a large number of genes that showed temporal pattern of expression during melanogenesis in B16 cells.  The role of MITF in regulation of these differentially expressed genes was investigated by carrying out global gene expression profiling of MITF silenced B16 cells. Together, our studies have suggested both MITF dependent and independent regulation of melanogenesis that would provide a framework to understand pigmentation disorders.