Characterizing a standardized BioPart for PVQ-specific expression in C. elegans

Synthetic biology relies on standardized biological parts (BioParts), and we aim to identify cell-specific promoters for every class of neuron in C. elegans . Here, we characterize a short BioPart (P nlp-17 , 300 bp) for PVQ-specific expression. P nlp-17 ::mScarlet showed bright, persistent, and specific expression in hermaphrodite and male PVQ neurons from multicopy arrays and single-copy insertions starting from the comma stage. We generated standardized P nlp-17 cloning vectors with gfp and mScarlet compatible with single-copy or array expression for PVQ-specific transgene expression or identification. To facilitate gene synthesis, we have incorporated P nlp-17 as a standard BioPart in our online transgene design tool (www.wormbuilder.org/transgenebuilder).