Synthetic muscle promoters with activities exceeding naturally occurring regulatory sequences in cardiac cells

Abstract From the Canadian patent

Transgenes driven by naturally occurring cardiac promoters have relatively low levels of cardiac transgenic gene expression and have consequently limited , the use of cardiac muscle as a target for plasmid mediated gene supplementation. However, by randomly assembling motifs of E-box MEF-2, TEF-1 , and SRE elements, cardiac-specific synthetic promoter recombinant libraries have been produced. By screening hundreds of resultant clones for transcriptional activity both in vitro and in vivo a few cardiac-specific , synthetic promoters were discovered comprising a transcriptional potency that greatly exceeds the transcriptional levels obtained from natural myogenic and viral gene …