Applications of Reporter Gene Assays

Improve Promoter Analysis with Luciferase Reporters

• Promoter analysis seeks to understand why a particular gene responds to a particular environmental condition or treatment.
• Originally, promoter dissection involved deletion analysis of the proximal promoter region until the gene response to the condition or treatment changed or was eliminated.
• Today, bioinformatics allows researchers to make "educated guesses" about what regions of the promoter will be important for a particular response.

Long Terminal Repeat Promoter Analysis of HIV-1

• Treating T-cells infected with HIV-1 involves activating the provirus that has integrated into the genome so that these cells can be "marked" for treatment. However, activating the provirus triggers the NF-κB pathway and activates the T-cell, allowing the virus to replicate and infect additional cells. The authors of this study screened for factors that could activate a HIV-1 promoter in which the NF-κB sites were mutated.

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