Figure 2.

Pioglitazone increases the mitochondrial DNA integrity and copy number in vitiligo melanocytes. (A) Treatment with PGZ at 2 µM for 10 days significantly increased the mtDNA copy number. Nuclear DNA was used as an internal reference for data normalization. (B) RT-PCR underlined an upregulation of the PGC1α gene expression level. (C) The cytomic approach did not demonstrate any mitochondrial mass modification after PGZ treatment. (D) mRNA of VDAC1 was reduced by PGZ. (E) The representative immuno-blot did not show any modification of total OXPHOS complexes. (F) Principal component analysis (PCA) was generated by comparing 6 primary treated vitiligo melanocytes with the same number of primary untreated vitiligo and primary normal melanocytes. The data are mean ± SD of at least 3 independent experiments, * p ≤ 0.05.