Systematic Comparison of Constitutive Promoters and the Doxycycline-Inducible Promoter
Key findings
Head-to-head benchmarking of eight constitutive promoters (SV40, CMV, UBC, EF1A, PGK, CAGG, plus Drosophila controls) and the rtTA/TRE dox-inducible system across eight mammalian cell lines by lentiviral stable integration and GFP flow cytometry. EF1A and CAGG are consistently the strongest drivers; SV40 is moderate; PGK and UBC are consistently weak. CMV is most variable—very strong in 293T cells but silenced in fibroblasts and mesenchymal stem cells. The rtTA/TRE system at maximal dox matches EF1A/CAGG output with near-zero leakage. Primary citation justifying EF1A or CAGG selection over CMV for stable long-term expression.