Characterizing a standardized BioPart for PVQ-specific expression in C. elegans

MicroPubl Biol. 2023 Jun 22:2023:10.17912/micropub.biology.000870. doi: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000870. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Synthetic biology relies on standardized biological parts (BioParts), and we aim to identify cell-specific promoters for every class of neuron in C. elegans . Here, we characterize a short BioPart (P nlp-17 , 300 bp) for PVQ-specific expression. P nlp-17 ::mScarlet showed bright, persistent, and specific expression in hermaphrodite and male PVQ neurons from multicopy arrays and single-copy insertions starting from the comma stage. We generated standardized P nlp-17 cloning vectors with gfp and mScarlet compatible with single-copy or array expression for PVQ-specific transgene expression or identification. To facilitate gene synthesis, we have incorporated P nlp-17 as a standard BioPart in our online transgene design tool (www.wormbuilder.org/transgenebuilder).

Grants and funding

This work was funded by a competitive research grant from the KAUST Office of Research Administration (CRG9 URF/1/4388-01-01).