The 5' regulatory region from the Drosophila pseudoobscura hsp82 gene results in a high level of reporter gene expression in Lucilia cuprina embryos.

We have previously examined the efficiency of two Drosophila melanogaster promoters to enable reporter gene expression in embryos of the Australian sheep blowfly, Lucilia cuprina. Both the hsp70 heat-shock promoter and the actin5C promoter resulted in low levels of expression of a reporter gene in these embryos. In this study, the D. pseudoobscura hsp82 promoter (phsp82) was tested for its ability to direct the expression of the Escherichia coli chloramphenicol acetyltransferase-encoding gene (cat). We report that the level of CAT activity in L. cuprina embryos was comparable to that obtained with the same construct in D. melanogaster, indicating that phsp82 functions efficiently in this non-drosophilid insect. The results suggest that phsp82 may be utilised in other non-drosophilid insects in which poor expression levels are obtained from constructs containing the hsp70 or actin5C promoters.