Regulated readthrough: a new method for the alternative tagging and targeting of recombinant proteins.

We report here a new method for the alternative peptide tagging of recombinant proteins from mammalian cell lines. This method, which we called regulated readthrough, exploits the property of aminoglycoside antibiotics to promote translational readthrough of nonsense codons. The basic expression cassette includes a translational fusion between a gene of interest and a membrane targeting peptide, which are separated by a nonsense codon.