Figure 1. Selection of RNA for construction of the Lighting-UP switch.
(A) Principle of the Lighting-UP switch on the basis of allosteric interaction between an engineered Luciferase and RNA containing a TAR-RNA and aptamer. (B) Sequences of the th5N-G0 and tc5N-G0 libraries for theophylline-responsive and tetracycline-responsive switches, respectively. Theophylline-specific aptamer, tetracycline-specific aptamer and TAR-RNA are indicated in red, green and blue, respectively. Sequences in the 5′ and 3′ termini were added as primer binding sites for amplification of RNAs by RT-PCR. N5 indicates a 5-nt long linker region with a random sequence. (C) Schematics showing the procedure to select RNAs that allosterically interact with the Tat-peptide in response to a target molecule.