We previously described a novel in vitro culture technique for dedifferentiated human adult skin melanocytes. Melanocytes cultured in a defined, cholera toxin and PMA free medium became bipolar, unpigmented, and highly proliferative. Furthermore, TRP-1 and c-Kit expression disappeared and EGFR receptor and nestin expression were induced in the cells. Here, we further characterized the phenotype of these dedifferentiated cells and by comparing them to mature pigmented melanocytes we detected crucial steps in their phenotype change. Our data suggest that normal adult melanocytes easily dedifferentiate into pluripotent stem cells given the right environment. This dedifferentiation process described here for normal melanocyte is very similar to what has been described for melanoma cells, indicating that phenotype switching driven by environmental factors is a general characteristic of melanocytes that can occur independent of malignant transformation.

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来自人类成人皮肤的黑素细胞的表型可塑性

我们之前描述了一种用于去分化的成人皮肤黑色素细胞的新型体外培养技术。在确定的霍乱毒素和无 PMA 培养基中培养的黑色素细胞变成双极、无色素和高度增殖的。此外，TRP-1 和 c-Kit 表达消失，EGFR 受体和巢蛋白在细胞中的表达被诱导。在这里，我们进一步表征了这些去分化细胞的表型，并通过将它们与成熟的黑色素细胞进行比较，我们检测了它们表型变化的关键步骤。我们的数据表明，在适当的环境下，正常成年黑色素细胞很容易去分化成多能干细胞。这里描述的正常黑色素细胞的去分化过程与黑色素瘤细胞的描述非常相似，