U6 Promoter: Drives expression of the shRNA. This is the promoter of the human U6 snRNA gene, an RNA polymerase III promoter which efficiently expresses short RNAs.
Sense, Antisense: These sequences are derived from your target sequences and are transcribed to form the stem portion of the “hairpin” structure of the shRNA.
Loop: This optimized sequence is transcribed to form the loop portion of the shRNA “hairpin” structure.
Terminator: Terminates transcription of the shRNA.
hPGK promoter: Human phosphoglycerate kinase 1 gene promoter. It drives the ubiquitous expression of the downstream marker gene.
Kozak: Kozak consensus sequence. It is placed in front of the start codon of the ORF of interest because it is believed to facilitate translation initiation in eukaryotes.
Marker: A drug selection gene (such as neomycin resistance) or a visually detectable gene (such as EGFP). This allows cells transfected with the vector to be selected and/or visualized.
SV40 late pA: Simian virus 40 late polyadenylation signal. It facilitates transcriptional termination of the upstream ORF.
pUC ori: pUC origin of replication. Plasmids carrying this origin exist in high copy numbers in E. coli.
Ampicillin: Ampicillin resistance gene. It allows the plasmid to be maintained by ampicillin selection in E. coli.