To further assess the possible binding activation of the MRE motifs in HsMT1 and HsMT2 promoters with HsMTF-like, series of recombinant plasmids were constructed and employed as follows. Six kinds of recombinant plasmids, which included wild-type HsMT1 and HsMT2 promoter-luciferase reporter vectors (referred to pMT1-1121 and pMT2-1121), HsMTs promoter-luciferase reporter vectors with mutated MREs (named as pMT1-1121-MREmut, pMT2-1121-MREamut, pMT2-1121-MREbmut and pMT2-1121-MREabmut), and an eukaryotic expression vector pcDNA-HsMTFlike were prepared.
The whole HsMTF-like ORF cDNA sequence was digested with the restriction enzymes Nhe I and Hind Ш, and inserted into the eukaryotic expression vector pcDNA3.1 at the same sites. Positive clones containing the pcDNA3.1-HsMTF-like were subjected to sequence confirmation.
In order to construct the plasmid of pMT1-1121-MREmut, pMT2-1121-MREamut, pMT2-1121-MREbmut and pMT2-1121-MREabmut, MRE motifs were mutated by fusion PCR with a pair of complementary primers containing the desired nucleotides. The mutations were generated using a
QuickChange Site-Directed Mutagenesis kit (Qiagen) and the primers used for mutagenesis were listed in Table 1. Finally, the obtained PCR fragments were inserted into pGL3-Basic vector and verified by DNA sequencing at Sangon Biotech (Shanghai, China).
Wang C., Shu F., Hong Y., Wang J., Peng K., Sheng J., Wu D., Hu B., Shi J, & Jian S. (2018). Analysis of the structure and activity of the promoter regions of the metallothionein genes of the freshwater pearl mussel Hyriopsis schlegelii. Bioscience, biotechnology, and biochemistry, 82(5).