The X-MAN reporter kits, launched in November 2012, are essentially cell lines with built-in reporter constructs. This removes the traditional step of treating cells with reporter-bearing plasmids, which can introduce hundreds of copies of the gene of interest or its promoter. “The problem with overexpression models is that you’re obviously not expressing the reporter at the same level as the native protein or gene, and that can lead to artifactual data,” says Holly Astley, one of the Horizon scientists who helped develop the X-MAN kits. “We felt that by attaching the reporter to the gene or protein at the endogenous level, we could get around this.”
There are two lines of X-MAN reporter kits: cell lines with Promega’s NanoLuc luciferase reporter, which Astley and her colleagues were confident would be detectable even at natural expression levels, and cell lines with Promega’s HaloTag, which can be used in a variety of different applications. Once the protein of interest is expressed with the HaloTag, researchers can add a fluorescent protein to visualize it, examine its interactions with other proteins, or even collect the protein of interest and any proteins that may have bound it.
Molecular biologist Yaping Liu, an associate principal scientist at Merck, is using X-MAN reporter kits to look at the expression of Myc, a regulator gene that is mutated in many cancers. “We consider it a more physiologically relevant cell line to study gene expression,” Liu says.
Kit prices start at $550, and include the engineered cell line along with the necessary reagents. “It works out to about $1 per assay,” says Jonathan Frampton, diagnostic product manager at Horizon Diagnostics, a business unit of the UK-based Horizon Discovery.
GIDDINGS: The quantitative advances in this reporter technology should add up to a qualitative advance in researcher capabilities to image a host of metabolic activities.
LUSTIG: The cell assay can be used to measure changes in expression of endogenous genes, something not possible with overexpression models in widespread use.
GIDDINGS: The quantitative advances in this reporter technology should add up to a qualitative advance in researcher capabilities to image a host of metabolic activities.
LUSTIG: The cell assay can be used to measure changes in expression of endogenous genes, something not possible with overexpression models in widespread use.
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