The use of reporter genes for simple analysis of promoter activity (promoter bashing) is a well known practice. However, there are many other elegant applications of reporter technologies. One such application is illustrated in the paper by Zheng et al., published in the Sept. 2008 issue of Cancer Research. These researchers from the Hormel Institute at the University of Minnesota showed that the cyclin-dependent kinase cdk3 phosphorylates the transcription factor ATF1 and enhances its transcriptional and transactivation activity. The observed cdk/ATF1 signaling was shown to have an important role in cell proliferation and transformation. To do this they used several variations of a reporter-based two-hybrid assay.

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