Fig 1: Regulation of aSyn by melanocytic differentiation and microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF). (A) Volcano plot depicting aSyn expression by in silico analysis of a comparison of melanocytes and de-differentiated melanocytes (MBrcs) induced into pluripotent stem cells (IPs). Raw dataset of Ohi et al. (GSE23034) [63]. ASyn was marked with black arrow. (B) Evaluation of aSyn within transcriptome analysis data (n = 3) obtained by cDNA microarray (Supplementary Table S1) of melanocytes compared to MBrc. (C,D) Western blot analysis and densitometric evaluation of aSyn protein expression in melanocytes compared to MBrcs (n = 6). (E) Analysis of the effect of downregulated MITF on aSyn and tyrosinase-related protein-2 (TRP2) in NHEMs by qRT-PCR (n = 10). (F,G) Protein expression analysis of aSyn and TRP2 in siMITF-treated NHEMs (n = 4). Beta-actin was used as an internal control for normalization. The dot and box plots show the mean ± SEM. Paired t-test: *: p < 0.05, **: p < 0.01, ***: p < 0.001, ****: p ≤ 0.0001.