AAV with CamKII(0.4) promoter driven TdTomato

This AAV expresses TdTomato 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 .

dTomato belongs to a family of fluorescent proteins called mFruit. Two dTomato units were joined head-to-tail through a linker, yielding a tandem dimer fluorescent protein, tdTomato. The tdTomato derivative is the brightest fluorescent protein yet reported, featuring an orange-red emission maximum at 581nm and is one of the most photo-stable fluorescent proteins. Other fluorescent proteins with similar emission spectra include DsRed, DsRed2, TurboRFP, TagRFP, and TagRFP-T.