Quantitative analysis of luciferase activity of viral and hybrid promoters in bovine preimplantation embryos

Imaging of light emission from the expression of luciferases in living cells and organisms: a review

“…Various promoter/enhancer-Pluc constructs were microinjected into pre-implantation bovine embryos and their expression assayed by luminometer and photon-imaging at 2 and 6 days postinjection (200). These experiments tended to document the persistence of early somatic cell promoter activation during embryonic development.…”

The use of green fluorescent protein (GFP) to select bovine embryos

“…In our experiment the chicken β-actin promoter was used. According to Nakamura et al (1998) this promoter, with its luciferase reporter gene was expressed more intensively in bovine morulae and blastocysts than gene constructs consisting of thymidine kinase with SV40 early promoters. From three transgenic embryos, one embryo was 100% GFP positive.…”

Fluorescence Expression by Bovine Embryos after Pronuclear Microinjection with the EGFP Gene.

“…Therefore, for the production of large transgenic animals such as a cattle, detection of the transgene at the pre-implantation stage would be desirable, considering the long gestation period and limited number of offspring. In bovine studies, although several non-invasive methods using firefly luciferase as a marker [7,8,10] or neomycin resistance gene [2] have been reported for selection of the transgenic embryos, the former method requires a step for loading the substrate (luciferin) inside the cells, and the substrate is known to be toxic, whereas the latter requires the presence of neomycin in the culture medium.…”