Patent ID: 6936457

Claim:
A stably transfected rodent cell line which has been engineered to express a heterologous protein, said cell line comprising a host cell transformed or transfected with a heterologous nucleic acid molecule comprising a sequence of nucleotides or ribonucleotides that inducibly express an α 7 subunit of a human neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, wherein said α 7 subunit comprises a sequence of nucleotides selected from the group consisting of: (a) a sequence of nucleotides as set forth in SEQ ID No: 11 which encode a human α 7 subunit, (b) a sequence of nucleotides that encode a polypeptide as set forth in SEQ ID No: 12; (c) a sequence of nucleotides degenerate with the human α 7 subunit polypeptide encoding sequence of (a) or (b).