AAV with hRPE(0.8) promoter driven Venus

This AAV expresses Venus driven by a retina hRPE(0.8) promoter.

The RPE65 gene encodes a protein of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) with a key role in the cycling of retinoids. It was shown that a RPE promoter of about 0.8 Kb was sufficient to direct high RPE-specific expression in transgenic mice. The 1.5Kb version of the promoter hRPE(1.5), also gives RPE-specific expression, but the expression level is not as high as the 0.8Kb promoter. This is probably due to a negative regulatory element(s) present in the 1.5Kb promoter.

Like mCitrine and EYFP, Venus was developed in an effort to get better variants of YFP in terms of brightness and photo-stability. Venus has an Excitation/Emission spectrum of 515nm/529nm which is almost identical to that of EYFP and mCitrine.