Notes: The authors identified single nucleotide mutations in gene regulatory regions that may result in transcriptional changes in the context of lung adenocarcinoma. Further, 31 of these regulatory region mutations were found in clinical lung adenocarcinoma isolates and were associated with patient outcomes. The Nano-Glo® Dual-Luciferase® Reporter Assay was used to compare expression with wild-type or mutant regulatory regions. Specifically, the relative activity of the mutant NFATC1 regulatory region was shown to be 3-fold higher compared to wild-type. (5092)

Notes: This paper describes a rapid dual-luciferase-based assay for L1 retrotransposition that is amenable to high-throughput screening. A firefly luciferase vector in which the luciferase gene was disrupted by an antisense intron was constructed by introducing a 900-bp fragment of the human γ-globin intron into pGL4.13. This Fluc gene, interrupted by an antisense intron, gives only minimal luciferase expression unless the luciferase gene is restored by a retrotransposition event. The authors also tested a similar retrotransposition reporter using the pGL4.73 Renilla luciferase vector, but found that the firefly construct gave much higher signals. They therefore used the firefly luciferase retrotransposition reporter, a Renilla luciferase normalization control and the Dual-Luciferase^® Assay to characterize profiles of retrotransposition by various human and mouse L1 elements, and to measure the kinetics of L1 retrotransposition in cultured cells. The GloMax^® Multi Luminometer was used to quantify luciferase activity. (4205)

Notes: In this study, the Renilla luciferase gene from the phRL-CMV Vector was incorporated into polioviral RNA in place of a structural protein-coding region. Renilla luciferase activity was then monitored as a convenient indicator of viral replication. Specifically, these authors tested whether the guanine nucleotide exchange factors GBF1 and BIG2 could rescue brefeldin A (BFA)-induced inhibition of polioviral replication in HeLa cells. Cells were transfected with plasmids encoding either GBF1 or BIG2, together with the firefly-luciferase-encoding pGL4.13 Vector, which was used as a control to monitor transfection efficiency. Eighteen hours post-transfection, the cells were transfected with polioviral replicon RNA containing the Renilla luciferase gene. One hour later, normal growth medium containing EnduRen^® Live Cell Substrate and either BFA or solvent alone, was added and Renilla luciferase activity was monitored at hourly intervals for 7 hours. Cells were then lysed and firefly luciferase activity was measured to assess transfection efficiency using the Dual-Glo^® Luciferase Assay System System. In the presence of BFA, GBF1 was able to partially rescue viral replication. In the presence of BIG2 and BFA, no viral replication occurred. (3562)