The pmirGLO Dual-Luciferase miRNA Target Expression Vector(a–d) is designed to quantitatively evaluate microRNA (miRNA) activity by the insertion of miRNA target sites 3´ of the firefly luciferase gene (luc2 ). These target sites can be introduced by cloning putative miRNA binding sites alone, or the 3´ untranslated region (UTR) of a gene of interest, to study the influence of these sites on transcript stability and activity. Firefly luciferase is the primary reporter gene; reduced firefly luciferase expression indicates the binding of endogenous or introduced miRNAs to the cloned miRNA target sequence. This vector is based on Promega dual-luciferase technology, with firefly luciferase (luc2 ) used as the primary reporter to monitor mRNA regulation and Renilla luciferase (hRluc-neo) acting as a control reporter for normalization and selection. This vector contains the following features:
Human phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) promoter provides low translational expression, which is advantageous when reduction of signal is the desired response. The PGK promoter is a nonviral universal promoter, which functions across cell lines (yeast, rat, mouse and human).
Multiple cloning site (MCS) is located 3´ of the firefly luciferase reporter gene (luc2 ).
Humanized Renilla luciferase-neomycin resistance cassette (hRluc-neo) is used as a control reporter for normalization of gene expression and stable cell line selection.
Ampr gene allows bacterial selection for vector amplification.
SV40 late poly(A) signal sequence is positioned downstream of luc2 to provide efficient transcription termination and mRNA polyadenylation.