Transcriptomics profiling of the effect of inducible knock-down of the melanocyte inducing transcription factor (MITF) in melanoma cell lines

MITF plays critical role in development and differentiation of melanocytes and in the context of melanoma, as a lineage survival oncogene. Given its crucial role in melanoma biology, it is very difficult to generate complete knock-out (KO) of MITF and in our hands, those that were generated appear to behave differently than the effect observed using siRNA mediated knock-down, possibly indicative of selection. In order to overcome the limitation of the transient effect of siRNA and study the effect of MITF depletion over a longer period of time, we carried out transcriptomic analyses of Doxycycline inducible shMITF knock down after 8 days in 2 melanoma cell lines MeWo (CVCL_0445) and SkMel 28 (CVCL_0526)