AAV with CAG promoter driven hChR2(H134R)-EGFP

This AAV expresses hChR2(H134R)-EGFP driven by an ubiquitous CAG promoter.

The roughly 1.8Kb CAG promoter (also known as CBA promoter or CAGGS promoter) is a strong synthetic promoter frequently used to drive high levels of gene expression in mammalian cells. The CAG promoter is composed of the following regulatory elements: (C) cytomegalovirus (CMV) early enhancer element; (A) the promoter region, the first exon, and the first intron of chicken beta-Actin gene, and (G) the splice acceptor of the rabbit beta-Globin gene. Like the EF1a promoter, the CAG promoter is commonly used as an alternative for the CMV promoter, from which the expression is decreased due to methylation/silencing. In many cell types tested, the CAG and EF1a promoters give much higher levels of expression than other commonly used cellular promoters such as the UBC and PGK promoters.

Channelrhodopsins are light-gated ion channels that exist naturally in microalgae. hChR2 is a humanized version of ChR2 for mammalian expression. It is maximally excited by 470 nm light. The wild-type, as well as a few mutations, provide the fastest excitation of the channelrhodopsins offered, and are widely used in optogenetics techniques in neuroscience. Due to delayed channel closure, hChR2(H134R) is a gain-of-function mutation that produces larger photocurrents than wild-type hChR2, but slows down channel kinetics.