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Normal murine melanocytes in culture

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Summary

A major obstacle to applying the techniques of molecular biology to the genetics and cell biology of pigmentation has been our inability to grow normal murine melanocytes in culture. We report here the establishment and characterization of continuously proliferating cultures of cutaneous pigment cells from seven strains of mice. Melanocytes were grown from the dermis of newborn mice in medium containing 12-0-tetradecanoyl-13-phorbol-acetate; a substance, such as melanotropin, that raises intracellular levels of cyclic AMP; and an extract made from human placenta.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Dermatology, University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, P.O. Box 3333, 06510, New Haven, Connecticut

    Akihiko Tamura, Ruth Halaban, Gisela Moellmann & Aaron B. Lerner

  2. Department of Human Genetics, University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, P.O. Box 3333, 06510, New Haven, Connecticut

    Janet M. Cowan

  3. Department of Section of Molecular, University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, P.O. Box 3333, 06510, New Haven, Connecticut

    Michael R. Lerner

Authors
  1. Akihiko Tamura
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  2. Ruth Halaban
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  3. Gisela Moellmann
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  4. Janet M. Cowan
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  5. Michael R. Lerner
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  6. Aaron B. Lerner
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Additional information

This work was supported by Grant R01 CA04679 from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a fellowship to Dr. A. Tamura from Mr. and Mrs. Allen Locklin. The chromosome studies were carried out in the laboratory of Dr. Uta Francke, Department of Human Genetics, Yale University. JCM was supported by NIH contract number N01-CP-21037.

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Tamura, A., Halaban, R., Moellmann, G. et al. Normal murine melanocytes in culture. In Vitro Cell Dev Biol 23, 519–522 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02628423

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02628423

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