Patent ID: 8795962

Claim:
An in vitro method for assessing a post-transcriptional effect in a cell wherein said method comprises: (i) providing an expression vector comprising: (a) a promoter region comprising a non-inducible constitutively active ribosomal protein gene promoter and at least one sp1 site-containing sequence, wherein the ribosomal protein gene promoter comprises the promoter of ribosomal protein S23 (RPS23) gene or the promoter of ribosomal protein S30 (RPS30) gene, or a fragment of said RPS23 promoter or said RPS30 promoter wherein said fragment has at least 50 nucleotides; (b) a reporter gene or heterologous gene; and (c) a 3′ untranslated region (3′ UTR), wherein said reporter gene or heterologous gene is operably linked to said promoter region and said 3′ UTR; (ii) introducing the expression vector into a cell; and (iii) assaying reporter gene or heterologous gene expression in the transfected cell of step (ii) wherein expression of the reporter gene or heterologous gene is responsive to a post-transcriptional effect, and wherein the expression of said reporter gene or heterologous gene is independent of transcriptional induction by TNF-α or okadaic acid.