AAV with CMV-IVS promoter driven hChR2(E123T/T159C)-TdTomato

This AAV expresses hChR2(E123T/T159C)-TdTomato driven by an ubiquitous CMV-IVS promoter.

The CMV-IVS promoter is about 1.1 kb in length and consists of the commonly used CMV promoter/enhancer and the intron (IVS) from beta-globin . The presence of intron elements was shown to give a higher level of transgene expression than that of the original CMV promoter/enhancer.

hChR2 is a humanized version of ChR2 for mammalian expression. Wild-type ChR2, as well as a few of its mutations, provides the fastest excitation of the channelrhodopsins offered, and is widely used in in optogenetics techniques in neuroscience. The hChR2(E123T/T159C) double mutation combines larger photocurrents from the T159C mutation and faster kinetics from the E123T mutation showing the highest speed/photocurrent combination so far. It is referred to as the second generation ultrafast optogenetics control.