(A) Schematic representation of the 5′ upstream DYT1/luciferase constructs for human (-2731hDYT1) and mouse (-2416mDYT1) DYT1 gene. The constructs were named based on the length between the 5′ and the 3′ boundary which corresponds to the first (mouse) or the fourth (human) nucleotide upstream of the ATG start codon, designated as +1 (bent arrow). The white rectangle represents the luciferase gene. (B) Both mouse and human 5′ upstream sequences exhibit over 100- or 40-fold induction of luciferase activity in HEK293 and N2A cell lines, respectively. The experiment was repeated at least three times. Results shown are means of luciferase activity over promoterless pGL3-BV, normalized to pCMV-βgal ± S.E.M. of a representative experiment, where each transfection was done in triplicates. mDYT1=mouse DYT1 gene, hDYT1=human DYT1 gene.