AAV with CAG2 promoter driven hChR2(E123T/T159C)-Venus
This AAV expresses hChR2(E123T/T159C)-Venus driven by an ubiquitous CAG2 promoter.
The CAG2 promoter is derived from the commonly used 1.8kb CAG/CBA (also called CAGGS) promoter. To increase the cloning capacity of size-limiting vectors using the CAG promoter, such as AAV or lentiviral vectors, CAG2 was developed by deleting a portion of about 0.6Kb of the chicken beta-actin intron from the original CAG promoter.
hChR2 is a humanized version of ChR2 for mammalian expression. Wild-type ChR2, as well as a few of its mutations, provides the fastest excitation of the channelrhodopsins offered, and is widely used in in optogenetics techniques in neuroscience. The hChR2(E123T/T159C) double mutation combines larger photocurrents from the T159C mutation and faster kinetics from the E123T mutation showing the highest speed/photocurrent combination so far. It is referred to as the second generation ultrafast optogenetics control.
Ready-to-use AAV expressing hChR2(E123T/T159C)-Venus driven by an ubiquitous CAG2 promoter. Available in AAV1, AAV2, AAV5, AAV6, AAV8, AAV9, AAV-DJ and other serotypes.