AAV with Enh358MCK promoter driven Cre Inducible mCherry

This AAV expresses DIO-mCherry driven by a muscle Enh358MCK promoter.

Muscle creatine kinase (MCK) is highly active in all striated muscles. MCK is the most abundant non-mitochondrial mRNA that is expressed in all skeletal muscle fiber types and is also highly active in cardiac muscle. The main regulatory regions in the murine MCK gene include a 358 bp proximal promoter and a muscle-specific, 200bp enhancer located approximately 1.1 kb away from the transcription start site. The muscle-specific enhancer contains 2 copies of E-Boxes, which are believed to be critical for the enhancer activity. Enh358MCK (Enh stands for enhancer, and 358MCK stands for the 358bp MCK proximal promoter) is constructed by ligating the ~200bp enhancer with the 358 bp proximal promoter of the murine MCK gene. This artificial promoter of about 0.6 Kb displays more or less the same activity as that of the full length 1.3 Kb MCKpromoter.

In the DIO scenario, the transgene of interest is inserted in reverse orientation relative to the 5' promoter and is flanked by oppositely oriented loxP and lox2272 sites. In the absence of Cre expression, the transgene will not be produced. In the presence of Cre expression, the transgene will be "FLip-EXchanged" or FLEXed, leading to expression of the transgene. This is due to a permanent Cre-mediated recombination/inversion of the flanked transgene. This arrangement is called DIO (double-floxed inverse ORF), Cre-ON, Flex-rev (reverse), Flex-ON/FlexON, or DIO-AAV/AAV-DIO (double-floxed inverse ORF in AAV).