Figure 4. Schematic representations of the pcDNA3–10 aa MerTK Wt and Mut-DsRed2-IRES-EYFPnuc vectors and their expected protein expression patterns. The drawings illustrate the pcDNA3–10 aa MerTK Wt-DsRed2-IRES-EYFPnuc vector (A) and the pcDNA3–10 aa MerTK Mut-DsRed2-IRES-EYFPnuc vector (B). Blue arrows indicate the cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter, which efficiently drives the expression of the bicistronic RNA. The pink dashed lines indicate the first ten amino acid (aa) sequence of the MerTK protein that is a different amino acid at codon 1: Met (M) in 10 aa MerTK Wt (A) and Ile (I) in 10 aa MerTK Mut (B). The red boxes correspond to the DsRed2 sequence, and the pink and yellow boxes indicate the IRES-EYFPnuc sequence. Proteins produced from the wild-type construct vector are predicted to be expressed in the nucleus and the cytoplasm, while protein expression from the mutant construct vector is predicted to be found only in the nucleus.