Figure 1.

Schematic representation of plasmids used in this work. pCMV-GFP and pHSP-GFP are GFP expression plasmids with different promoters (CMV or Hsp70B′, respectively). pCMV-shGFP is a CMV-promoter-driven short hairpin RNA (shRNA) expression construct consisting of the cis-acting hammerhead ribozyme (ribo) immediately downstream of the CMV promoter, a gene-specific shRNA cassette targeting GFP, and a specific pausing site MAZ. pHSP-shGFP and pHSP-shT, structurally similar to pCMV-shGFP, are heat-inducible RNAi vectors containing the Hsp70B′ promoter.

Abbreviations: GFP, green fluorescent protein; CMV, cytomegalovirus; HSP, heat-shock protein; sh, short hairpin.