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Reporter Genes

Reporter Genes

Reporter genes are a type of protein-coding gene that are often tagged to a gene of interest. Once inside a target cell, reporter genes usually produce visually identifiable characteristics like fluorescence and luminescence when expressed along with the gene of interest. Thus, reporter genes “report” the presence or absence of genes of interest in an organism, determine the gene expression pattern, or track the physical location of a DNA segment or protein in the cell.
Commonly used reporter...

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Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Controllable Ion Channel Expression through Inducible Transient Transfection

Controllable Ion Channel Expression through Inducible Transient Transfection

Published on: February 17, 2017

Transient expression of proteins using COS cells.

¹Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Current Protocols in Neuroscience

|April 23, 2008

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

COS cells enable rapid, high-level protein production. This transient expression system is valuable for producing cell-surface, cytoplasmic, or secreted proteins efficiently.

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Area of Science:

Molecular Biology
Biotechnology
Protein Expression

Background:

COS cells are utilized for efficient protein production.
These cells express the SV40 large tumor (T) antigen, crucial for initiating viral DNA replication.
This facilitates high-level expression of desired proteins.

Purpose of the Study:

To describe the COS cell transient expression system for protein production.
To highlight its efficiency in terms of speed and yield.
To showcase its utility in various molecular biology applications.

Main Methods:

Transfection of COS cells with DNA encoding specific proteins (cell-surface, cytoplasmic, or secreted).
Utilizing the SV40 origin of replication for high-level protein synthesis.
Incubation periods of 72 hours for cellular proteins and 1 week for secreted proteins.

Main Results:

COS cells can produce several thousand to hundreds of thousands of protein copies per cell within 72 hours.
Up to 10 mg of secreted protein can be recovered from cell culture supernatant within 1 week.
Demonstrated efficiency in producing various protein types.

Conclusions:

COS cell transient expression systems offer a rapid and efficient method for protein production.
The system is versatile, applicable to screening cDNA libraries and testing expression vectors.
It provides a valuable tool for protein isolation and characterization prior to generating stable cell lines.