The present disclosure provides a promoter having at least the core components of a duck retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I) promoter, as well as expression constructs having the duck RIG-I promoter operably linked to a gene product-encoding nucleic acid (e.g., an avian RIG-I protein), and recombinant host cells containing the duck RIG-I promoter, e.g., in such expression constructs. The present disclosure also provide animals genetically modified to have a gene encoding a duck RIG-I promoter operably linked to a gene product-encoding nucleic acid (e.g., an avian RIG-I protein, such as a duck RIG-I protein).