Common Sense for the Biochemist

Alright, so I'm running a little behind on some PMP news so here goes. Icon Genetics has a paper in the June 2005 Nature Biotechnology journal. They explain their new expression system based on 'magnifection'. Basically, they insert ~12-16 introns and make a few silent mutations in their viral expression genome so that the sequence looks more "nuclear". Viral genomes usually hang out in the cytoplasm (outside the nucleus) of cells, therefore, there were problems getting the genome to be expressed when it was incorporated into a nuclear genome via Agrobacterium mediated transfection. It appears as if the insertion of introns and a few silent mutations make the genome look more nuclear and they are able to get more expression. Here is link to the paper via Icon Genetic's webpage