Nearly all experiments to date have used full-length huntingtin cloned by Ji-Joon Song and Ihn Sir Seong, who kindly shared their expression constructs with us.

Since then, we have cloned our own full-length expression constructs which can express full-length huntingtin protein in both insect cells AND mammalian cells. The wild-type (Q23) N-terminally tagged vector generated was screened for expression in these two systems and it worked – success! It is likely that additional purification steps are needed to really clean up the sample but it looks very promising.

Test expression of the huntingtin Q23 N-terminal FLAG tag construct

We are hoping to screen more constructs which have been generated with tags on the N or C terminus as well as a variety of different polyQ lengths. Once validated we will happily share these constructs with anyone who wants them!