Luciferase Reporter for Heat Shock Protein Promoter

NU 2009-004 

Inventor

Richard I. Morimoto 

Short Description

Novel reagent for detection of heat shock protein response 

Abstract

A Northwestern University researcher designed a reporter plasmid for quantitative determination of heat shock protein (HSP) response in a variety of cell lines. HSP response has been implicated as a mechanism of cell protection from various insults, and it is thought that its stimulation can lead to treatments for several diseases. The reporter plasmid generated in the Morimoto lab couples a luciferase gene to the HSP70.1 promoter region, so that stimulation of the HSP response leads to an increase in luminescence production. This system can be used for screening compound libraries for their ability to activate or inhibit HSP in several cell lines, in both transient and stable transfection. 

Applications

• Quantitative determination of HSP response
• High throughput screening for HSP activators

Advantages

• Able to respond to various HSP inducing conditions
• Compatible with various cell lines (HeLa, MCF7, BT474, H157, SH-SY5Y)

Publications

Westerheide SD, Bosman JD, Mbadugha BNA, Kawahara TLA, Matsumoto G, Kim S, Gu W, Devlin JP, Silverman RB, Morimoto RI (2004) Celastrols as Inducers of the Heat Shock Response and Cytoprotection. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 279: 56053-56060.