Activity of human telomerase catalytic subunit promoter in tumor cell lines

Objective To prove the human telomerase catalytic subunit(hTERT) promoter guided target gene expression in tumor cells.Methods The reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR) was performed to detect the expression of hTERT mRNA in tumor cells and human normal cells.Different lengths of hTERT promoter were amplified from genome cDNA by polymerase chain reaction(PCR), and were inserted into luciferase reporter vectors(pGL3) to construct recombinant plasmid, then identified recombinant plasmid by BglⅡand HindⅢ and transcriptional activities of hTERT promoter in cell lines by measuring the luciferase activities.Results The hTERT promoter in pGL3-204,pGL3-378,pGL3-1375 recombinant plasmid was detached as the expected results and the final formation could be achieved.The activity of recombinant plasmid had strong expression of luc+ in ARO cell lines, and reached to as much as 60 % of SV40.In FRO,U251 cell lines the figure was 20 % of SV40 promoter activity.Conclusion The hTERT promoter guided target gene has different transcriptional activities in various tumor cells, but no transcriptional activity in normal cells.