Detailed information

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) has changed from a nearly unknown protein to a commonly used molecular imaging tool in biology, genetics, medicine, and chemistry. GFP can be introduced into mammalian cells or whole organisms either by traditional plasmid transfection or viral infection. As the GFP gene is relatively small, it can be efficiently integrated into expression vectors without substantially increasing the vector's size. This feature allows vectors to be constructed that contain both a gene of interest, for instance, a therapeutic gene, and the GFP gene for use as a marker, without losing infection or transfection efficiencies. In many cases, the use of GFPs as a marker for efficient integration provides an improvement over more traditional antibiotic selection. Successfully transfected cells can be quickly sorted for GFP fluorescence by flow cytometry for immediate therapeutic use.

GFP can also be used to mark successful transgenics, especially because it is not toxic to the transgenic animal and can be monitored quickly and noninvasively by illumination by near-UV or blue light. GFP can be fused to a gene or tissue-specific promoter. And in transgenic animals, the expression can be monitored when a given tissue is subjected to certain promoter-responsive stimuli. Because GFPs can be viewed noninvasively, they may prove valuable tools for detecting tumors or diseased tissues in whole animals, or in human patients.

Based on years of experience and in-depth investigation, Creative Biogene has established a large number of GFP premade virus particles and stable GFP reporter cell lines. The GFP gene is stably integrated into the target cell genome to ensure stable reporter gene expression during continued passaging in culture. Importantly, an antibiotic selection gene (either puromycin or neomycin) is coupled to the reporter gene of interest to ensure that the cells express high levels of the desired reporter gene. Our stable GFP reporter cell lines are perfectly suited for in vivo imaging studies, where the high reporter gene expression facilitates detection of fewer implanted cells.