Reporter genes can be used both as positive controls and as negative controls and so are very useful reagents. If your cell line expresses the reporter either stably or via co-transfection of an expression plasmid, the anti-EGFP or anti-FLuc DsiRNAs can function as a positive control. If your cell line does not express these reporter genes, then the anti-EGFP or anti-FLuc DsiRNAs can function as negative controls. Importantly, these DsiRNAs are validated, functional duplexes with known efficient RISC loading and so offer an added level of "control" that non-targeting sequences cannot offer. Note that these duplexes target standard enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) or firefly luciferase (FLuc) and not newer, codon optimized variants (for example, FLuc-S1 will target the firefly luciferase gene in pGL2 and pGL3 but not pGL4 vectors).
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