AXL and melanoma: These results support the notion that relatively lower expression of CDC20 promotes a phenotypic state that is more proliferative, less invasive, and contains relatively high expression levels of important neural crest and melanocyte lineage specifiers such as SOX10. As CDC20 levels increase, a transcriptional state that is more associated with invasion and metastasis is observed, including relatively higher expression of AXL, a gene associated with metastasis in melanoma and other cancers15,65.