Mechanisms of differentiation in melanoma cells and melanocytes.

Literature is reviewed on the mechanisms of differentiation in mammalian melanoma cells and normal melanocytes. Pigment cells are particularly useful for studies requiring the observation of differentiation in living cells, for example, studies of commitment. Topics discussed include melanin synthesis and other markers of pigment cell differentiation; stochastic models of differentiation and commitment; the lability of early stages of differentiation; extracellular factors affecting pigment cell differentiation, with implications for intracellular controls; the role of proliferation and the cell cycle in differentiation, and the relative roles of changes in transcription, translation, and posttranslational processes.