Figure 2.

Functional analysis of human ghrelin promoter in cultured cells. Cell specificity of human ghrelin promoter activity was examined. The human ghrelin promoter sequence with different transcription initiation sites (from −4000/+1 to −600/+1) was ligated to the firefly luciferase and inserted into plasmid pGL3 basic. The constructed vectors were transiently transfected into (a) ECC10, (b) TT, and (c) COS-7 cells and the luciferase activities were measured. Relative luciferase activity was the ratio of the luciferase activity cotransfected with each expression vector versus pGL3 basic vector.