Transient Transfection of Schneider Cells in the Study of Transcription Factors

Transfections into Schneider’s Drosophila line 2 (abbreviated SL2 or S2) derived from Drosophila embryos (1 ) have been used to analyze activation properties of mammalian transcription factors (Table 1 ), to identify activation and inhibitory domains, as well as to investigate specific protein-protein interactions in vivo. SL2 cells are particularly suited to this task because they are devoid of many ubiquitous mammalian transcription factor activities and thus their transcriptional properties can be investigated in the absence of interference by endogenous factors. The usage of SL2 cells, as a host for studying the structure and function of heterologous, mammalian transcription factors, was originally reported by the group of R. Tjian to identify functional domains of AP-2 (2 ), Sp1 (3 ,4 ) and CTF/NF-I (5 ).