AAV with CMV7 promoter driven LacZ

This AAV expresses LacZ driven by an ubiquitous CMV7 promoter.

The CMV7 promoter is about 0.35 kb in length and is a shortened version of the commonly used CMV promoter. CMV7 has a truncated version of the CMV enhancer. When tested in several cell lines, this promoter provides an expression level that is about 3-5 fold lower than that of the original 0.6Kb CMV promoter.

The bacterial enzyme -galactosidase (gene LacZ) is frequently used as a reporter gene. It can be easily located with LacZ staining using the artificial substrate X-gal, which turns blue when cleaved by -galactosidase (LacZ).