Design of a translational repression based RNA switch in mammalian cells

Given the importance of molecular switches for the construction of artificial gene circuits, we developed a novel genetically encoded translational repression based switch that incorporates two copies of bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV) TAR-based RNA hairpins in the 5'-untranslated region (UTR). We observed a 7-fold decrease in translational efficiency for the translational repression switch in the presence of BIV Tat ligand. We further characterized the effect of increasing amounts of BIV Tat peptide on the translational efficiency of the repression switch.