Examination of the role of promoter elements in bidirectional transcription initiation

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Bidirectional transcription is an inherent feature of promoters and contributes to an abundance of sterile antisense transcripts throughout the genome"</p><p></p><p>Nucleic Acids Research 2007;35(8):2544-2553.</p><p>Published online 1 Apr 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1885649.</p><p>© 2007 The Author(s)</p> () Construction of dual reporter plasmids utilizing a shared promoter region in . Bidirectional plasmid constructs were generated to create a dual reporter system that permits us to quantify bidirectional transcription and to more closely examine the roles of specific elements within promoters. We generated several reporter constructs that contain firefly and luciferase reporter genes in a head-to-head arrangement, separated by different promoter regulatory units of the alpha-2 tubulin promoter. () Quantitative measurements of bidirectional promoter strength for elements of the alpha-2 tubulin promoter. Luciferase assays were conducted in triplicate on parasites stably transfected with the dual reporter constructs. Firefly and luciferase activities were established at 100% in the control (S1 and S2) plasmids, and other measurements were calculated relative to these levels