Biosynthesis of peptide precursors and protease inhibitors using new constitutive and inducible eukaryotic expression vectors.

A series of expression vectors has been constructed as based on the pML derivative of pBR322. The eukaryotic transcription units employ various promoters followed by polycloning sites for 3-9 commonly used restriction enzymes and are completed by the SV40 polyadenylation sequence. In 4 of the vectors, designed for co-transfection or transient expression studies, only a single transcription unit containing either a constitutive or an inducible promoter was incorporated. The human ubiquitin (UbC) promoter was used as a strong constitutive promoter, while the mouse metallothionein promoter and the promoter of the long terminal repeats of the mouse mammary tumor virus were used as inducible promoters. Another vector contained an additional transcription unit encoding a eukaryotic selection marker, the neomycin resistance encoding gene. The vectors were used in CHO cells and in neuroendocrine CA77 cells to synthesize peptide precursors, protease inhibitors and a protease. It is shown that these vectors are very efficient for the constitutive and inducible expression of nucleotide sequences in both transient and stable transfections of eukaryotic cells.