AAV with CamKII(0.4) promoter driven hChR2(T159C)-mCherry

This AAV expresses hChR2(T159C)-mCherry driven by a neuron CamKII(0.4) promoter.

This 0.4 Kb promoter is derived from murine α-Calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKII), a gene with expression restricted to excitatory neurons in the neocortex and hippocampus. It was shown that the promoter activity of CaMKII(0.4) is almost identical to that of CaMKII(1.3) in cortical neurons, Compared to CaMKII(1.3), this short promoter allows cloning of longer gene of interest into the AAV construct .

hChR2 is a humanized version of ChR2 for mammalian expression. The wild-type, as well as a few mutations, provide the fastest excitation of the channelrhodopsins offered, and are widely used in optogenetics techniques in neuroscience. hChR2(T159C) shows slightly higher photocurrents than the hChR2(H134R), another commonly used optogenetics tool.