Patent ID: 7429480

Claim:
An isolated WSSV immediate early promoter-regulatory region consisting essentially of a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of: (i) a nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:29; (ii) a 5′-truncated fragment of the nucleotide sequence of (i) which has at least 92 nucleotide residues as calculated from the 3′ end of SEQ ID NO:29; (iii) a nucleic acid sequence which is amplified from polymerase chain reaction using a WSSV genomic DNA as template and a primer pair having a forward primer and a reverse primer, the forward primer consisting essentially of a nucleotide sequence selected from nucleotide sequences as shown in SEQ ID NO:15 and SEQ ID NO:17, the reverse primer consisting essentially of a nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:16; (iv) a nucleic acid analogue of the nucleotide sequence of (i), which has at least about 60% sequence identity to the nucleotide sequence of (i) and is conserved in a region thereof that corresponds to the 92 nucleotide residues as calculated from the 3′ end of SEQ ID NO:29, and which can drive the expression of a target gene operatively connected thereto; and (v) a nucleic acid analogue of the 5′-truncated fragment of (ii), which has at least about 60% sequence identity to the 5′-truncated fragment of (ii) and is conserved in a region thereof that corresponds to the 92 nucleotide residues as calculated from the 3′ end of SEQ ID NO:29, and which can drive the expression of a target gene operatively connected thereto.