Improved transient protein expression by pFluNS1 plasmid

Influenza virus nonstructural protein-1 (NS1) is abundantly expressed in influenza virus infected cells. NS1 is well recognized for counteracting host antiviral activities and regulating host and viral protein expression. When used as a plasmid component in DNA transfection, NS1 was shown to significantly increase expression levels of a cotransfected gene of different plasmid. Our previous studies demonstrated that addition of an NS1 plasmid increased the expression levels of influenza virus secreted neuraminidase (sNA) gene in 293T cells. In this study, we improved the utilization of NS1 as an enhancer for transient protein expression by generating pFluNS1 plasmid to contain two expression cassettes; one encoding an NS1 gene and another encoding a gene of interest. pFluNS1 is expected to codeliver the NS1 gene into the same cells receiving the gene of interest. The plasmid is therefore designed to induce higher protein expression levels than a cotransfection of an NS1 plasmid and a plasmid containing a gene of interest. To test the efficiency of pFluNS1, influenza virus sNA and non-viral DsRed genes were cloned into pFluNS1. The expression of these genes from pFluNS1 was then compared to the expression from a cotransfection of an NS1 plasmid and an expression plasmid coding for sNA or DsRed. We found that gene expression from pFluNS1 reached equal or higher levels to those derived from the cotransfection. Because the expression from pFluNS1 needs only one plasmid, a lesser amount of transfection reagent was required. Thus, the use of pFluNS1 provides a transfection approach that reduces the cost of protein expression without compromising high levels of protein expression. Together, these data suggest that pFluNS1 can serve as a novel alternative for an efficient transient protein expression in mammalian cells.