Generation of Stable Cell Lines Expressing Chemokine Receptors

Most human and murine leukocytes express multiple chemokine receptors with overlapping ligand specificity. Therefore the creation of stable cell lines expressing specific chemokine receptors greatly facilitates chemokine receptor characterization, particularly in terms of ligand binding specificity, analysis of signal transduction pathways, and for diverse functional assays ranging from chemotaxis to HIV infection. The availability of stable cell lines expressing high levels of chemokine receptors is also becoming increasingly important in high throughput screening approaches for the identification of chemokine receptor antagonists and agonists. The basic steps in the generation of stable cell lines expressing chemokine receptors are as follows: