Bicistronic Vectors

[Lance Macaulay]

Hello;

I was wondering if anyone has any experience/heard any reports on the new 
bicistronic vectors for mammalian expression (eg pIRES1 from CLONTECH). From 
my understanding, they work by running your gene of interest AND the neo/hygR 
off the same promoter as one big transcript with an internal ribosome entry 
site (IRES) in b/w the two genes. This results in two proteins being 
translated off the one message suggesting that any cell neoR will also be 
expressing the protein of interest. It sounds great in theory as selection 
pressure is being put on your gene of interest, but is it as good as it 
sounds? 

Thanks;

David

David Tucker
CSIRO Division of Biomolecular Engineering
David.Tucker at mel.dbe.csiro.au