Patent ID: 7879540

Claim:
A synthetic nucleic acid molecule comprising at least 300 nucleotides of a coding region for a reporter polypeptide which has at least 90% amino acid sequence identity to a reporter polypeptide encoded by a wild type nucleic acid sequence, wherein the codon composition of the synthetic nucleic acid molecule is different at more than 25% of the codons from that of the wild type nucleic acid sequence, wherein the codons that are different are mammalian codons selected to result in the synthetic nucleic acid molecule having at least 3-fold fewer of a combination of different mammalian transcription factor binding sequences, and optionally a reduced number of intron splice sites, poly(A) addition sites or prokaryotic 5′ noncoding regulatory sequences relative to the wild type nucleic acid sequence, wherein the wild type nucleic acid sequence and the synthetic sequence encode luciferase, and wherein the synthetic nucleic acid molecule has at least 99% nucleotide sequence identity to SEQ ID NO: 9, SEQ ID NO: 16, SEQ ID NO: 18, SEQ ID NO: 297, SEQ ID NO: 299, or SEQ ID NO: 301.