Figure 1.

Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition-inducing transcription factors in physiological and pathological development of the melanocyte lineage. EMT-inducing transcription factors regulate stemness and differentiation in melanocytes (left), whereas they determine the oscillation between differentiated vs. invasive cancer cells in melanoma (right). Phenotype-switching that accounts for melanoma heterogeneity depends on a signaling switch of different EMT-inducing transcription factors and is regulated by microenvironmental cues, (epi)genetic instability, and oncogenic signaling.