Important note: Information in this article was accurate in April 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, April 3, 2000
Prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports
Researchers at the University of Arizona College of Medicine conducted this study, which was reported in the International Journal of Molecular Medicine (T.C. Tsang et al, "Construction of new amplifier expression vectors for high levels of IL-2 gene expression," Int J Mol Med 2000 Mar;5(3):295-300.
"Currently, expression vectors based on the human cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter give the highest levels of expression. We have attempted to construct new IL-2 expression vectors to test whether gene expression can be further increased," said T.C. Tsang and study coauthors.
Initially, the researchers used SR-(alpha) promoter to elicit IL-2 gene expression. SR-(alpha) is a new promoter, according to Tsang et al.
After that, they combined the Tat transcription activator gene with HIV 1 and 2 promoters in the same construct in order to amplify gene expression, according to the study protocol.
The SR-(alpha) promoter yielded results similar to the CMV promoter in human colon cancer cell lines, Tsang et al. found.
On the other hand, HIV 1 and 2 promoters yielded 11 and 28 times more IL-2 than the CMV promoter, respectively, they determined.
Tsang's group discerned that activity amplification was dependent on two factors: the presence of the Tat gene, and the orientation of the transcriptional units.
They also concluded that eliminating neomycin selectable markers would not increase activity of the promoter constructs.
The corresponding author for this study is D.T. Harris, University of Arizona, College of Medicine, Arizona Cancer Center, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Building 90, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
Key points reported in this study are:
This article was prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports.
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