Do cells transfected with lentivirus express specific unique surface markers - (Mar/30/2007 )

Dear all,

Do mammalian cell lines transfected with lentivirus made in 293T cells using plko, VSV, GAG and POL plasmids, if they express any surface markers which are unique to this cells and just I could distinguish them from non infected cells. I was under impression that lentiviral transfected do not express specific surface markers but some members in our lab think that this might not be the case.
Unfortunately I have several plko construct from the RNAi consortium which carry no GFP cassette but only a puromycin cassette, which I cannot use for selection, thus this question has arisen.

Cheers

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Why couldn't you use the puromycin cassette for selection?

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I want to do an MTS assay 2 to 3 days after transfection, which looks as proliferation and survival of cells. If I would use puromycin the none transfected cells will just die and thus affect the MTS assay.

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