Figure 2.

Polycistronic constructs for the heterologous co-expression of two hypothetical pesticidal proteins, Protein 1 and Protein 2, in transgenic plants. (a) IRES-mediated translation. An internal ribosome entry site (IRES) sequence is included between the codingsequences of Protein 1 and Protein 2 to drive a cap-independent, internal initiation of Protein 2 translation, in parallel to Protein 1 cap-dependent translation initiated at the polycistron transcript 5' end. (b) 2A peptide-mediated translation. A viral 2A peptide sequence is included between the coding sequences of Protein 1 and Protein 2 to induce ‘ribosomal skipping’ during translation leading to the co-translational release of the two proteins.