Patent ID: 7291461

Claim:
A method of identifying a compound that modulates premature translation termination or nonsense-mediated mRNA decay, said method comprising: (a) contacting a member of a library of compounds with a cell containing a first nucleic acid sequence and a second nucleic acid sequence, wherein the first nucleic acid sequence comprises a regulatory element operably linked to a reporter gene and the second nucleic acid sequence comprises a nucleotide sequence with a premature stop codon that encodes a regulatory protein that binds to the regulatory element of the first nucleic acid sequence and regulates the expression of the reporter gene; and (b) detecting the expression of the reporter gene, wherein a compound that modulates premature translation termination or nonsense-mediated mRNA decay is identified if the expression of the reporter gene in the presence of the compound is altered relative to the expression of the reporter gene in the absence of the compound or the presence of a negative control.