Abstract
Expression of transgenes within a single generation by direct DNA injection into vertebrate embryos has been plagued by inefficient and nonuniform gene expression. We report a novel strategy for efficient and stable expression of transgenes driven by both ubiquitous and tissue-specific promoters by direct DNA injection into developing Xenopus laevis embryos. This strategy involves flanking expression cassettes of interest with inverted terminal repeat sequences (ITRs) from adeno-associated virus. Our results suggest that the ITR strategy may be generally applicable to other systems, such as zebra fish and embryonic stem cells, and may enable tissue-specific expression of transgenes in problematic contexts.
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Fu, Y., Wang, Y. & Evans, S. Viral sequences enable efficient and tissue-specific expression of transgenes in Xenopus. Nat Biotechnol 16, 253–257 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0398-253
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0398-253
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