The intercoding regions of many Leishmania sp. genes have been implicated in the regulation of mRNA processing, stability, and translation. Herein we show that the intercoding region of the Leishmania chagasi α-tubulin gene (α-TUB) confers stable β-galactosidase (β-GAL) reporter mRNA levels during promastigote growth and development in vitro and during protein synthesis inhibition. The abundance of both endogenous α-TUB mRNA and β-GAL mRNA from a β-GAL coding region situated upstream of the α-TUB intercoding region did not change significantly as promastigotes grew from logarithmic to stationary phase in vitro and the half-life of the β-GAL mRNA remained constant. The abundance of both the endogenous α-TUB and the β-GAL mRNA increased by less than 2-fold after protein synthesis inhibition corresponding to a moderate increase in mRNA half-life. These data suggest that the α-TUB intercoding region is an excellent control for the study of the regulation of other differentially expressed genes.