UV-induced melanoma cell lines and their potential for proteome analysis: a review

We have established cell lines from benign cutaneous melanocytic lesions and from melanoma-affected lymph nodes of monodelphis domestica, the laboratory opossum (a South American marsupial now widely maintained in captive colonies for experimental purposes). Unlike melanoma cell lines currently available from humans and other mammals, the opossum lines are derived from cells transformed in vivo by experimentally controlled exposure to ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation of known spectral composition. Differences in the patterns of protein expression among cell lines at different stages of the UVB-induced melanoma cascade can be identified by proteome analysis and will provide a useful basis for comparisons with human and mouse melanoma cell lines. Powerful new two-dimensional (2D) gel electrophoresis technologies and sophisticated bioinformatics programs make it possible to carry out qualitative and quantitative analyses of the entire protein complement expressed by the genome (proteome) of a specific cell type. One area of biology particularly well suited to proteome analysis is carcinogenesis. It is now feasible, for example, to attempt to characterize the full repertoire of proteins, including all the antigenic determinants at the cell surface and in the cytosol, during the carcinogenic cascade from normal progenitor cells, to benign tumor cells, and finally, to highly invasive metastatic cells. Proteome analyses have been initiated with the cell lines from M. domestica.