GUS reporter system

[4] There are different possible glucuronides that can be used as substrates for the β-glucuronidase, depending on the type of detection needed (histochemical, spectrophotometrical, fluorimetrical).

[5] This process is analogous to hydrolysis of X-gal by Beta-galactosidase[5] to produce blue cells as is commonly practiced in bacterial reporter gene assays.

Beta-glucuronidase can function through a wide range of pH values, and is fairly resistant to thermal inactivation.

DiX-indigo, can associate with lipids to diffuse far from the site of enzyme activity, which shows a lack of cytosolic localization and irregularity of substrate penetration.

Other competing systems are based on e.g. luciferase, GFP, beta-galactosidase, chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT), alkaline phosphatase.

The use of one or the other system is mainly dependent on the organism of interest and the imaging and microscopy technologies available to the laboratories conducting the research.

Reporter systems have been used for the determination of the efficiency of gene delivery systems, the intracellular localization of a gene product, the detection of protein-protein or protein-DNA interactions, the efficiency of translation initiation signals and the success of molecular cloning efforts.