Hi there,

These reporters are easy to detect as they both produce photons. So by measuring the intensity of light emission you get an idea about the level of protein expression without having to extract and characterize the protein biochemically.

Hi Dominique,

Thank you very much for your reply. But none of the studies say that they used the reporter gene expression for any analysis. If they are using reporter gene expression to measure gene expression, why would they do RNA-Seq?

They use an easily visualized reporter, like GFP, to see if the randomly cloned piece of DNA is sufficient to enhance a minimal promotor. You pick the colonies that glow and then use sequencing to determine the identity of the cloned piece of DNA.

Look at Figure 2

Article Decoding enhancers using massively parallel reporter assays

Thank you very much Katie!