If I transfect my cells just with the retroviral transfer plasmid ( pWZL- Hygro) without the packaging vector (pCl-eco), would it only be transiently expressed? The retroviral vector sequence would integrate into the cellular genome or not in this case.
Thanks
If you transfer just the backbone plasmid, it won't integrate - it's just a plasmid. This is because you've omitted the plasmid that contains pol - which encodes the reverse transcriptase and the integrase ( https://www.abmgood.com/marketing/knowledge_base/The_Lentivirus_System.php ). We have often tested our backbones by delivering them on their own, before vector synthesis
Keep in mind that some lentiviral transfer plasmids are unsuitable for transient transfection, because they use a promoter (LTR) which is activated by a gene product expressed off one of the other plasmids (TAT). These plasmids will express very weakly if they are transfected rather than packaged into lenti particles. Other transfer plasmids use constitutive or cell type specific promoters and will work just fine as expression vectors without the rest of the lenti machinery. If Addgene has a sequence or a good map for your plasmid it should be easy to figure out which is the case :)
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