Insect baculoviruses are capable of infecting mammalian glial cells in the central nervous system. We investigated in the current study the feasibility of using the viruses as toxin gene vectors to eliminate malignant glioma cells in the brain. We first confirmed that glioma cells were permissive to baculovirus infection, with variable transduction efficiencies at 100 viral particles per cell a...

The baculovirus expression system has proved to be a useful tool for the production of recombinant proteins. Here we have characterized the Neospora caninum surface protein NcSRS2 produced by two types of the recombinant virus and also have developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using recombinant NcSRS2 for the serologic diagnosis of Neospora infection. Western blot analysis sho...

Treatment with 2 mM CuSO4 was used to induce a Drosophila melanogaster metallothionein (Mtn) promoter that had been cloned into a recombinant baculovirus. Careful study revealed that the Mtn promoter functioned as an inducible, if somewhat "leaky" promoter within the context of baculovirus-infected cells. In the process of generating a recombinant-baculovirus, it was discovered that post-transf...

An improved polyhedrin-based baculovirus expression vector was constructed to expedite distinguishing infections by putative baculovirus recombinants from infections by wild-type (wt) baculovirus. The vector utilizes the Escherichia coli beta-galactosidase gene (lacZ) as a genetic marker for positive recombination between wt Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus and the baculovirus ...

Recombinant baculoviruses have been extensively used as vectors for abundant expression of a large variety of foreign proteins in insect cell cultures. The appeal of the system lies essentially in easy cloning techniques and virus propagation combined with the eukaryotic post-translational modification machinery of the insect cell. Recently, a novel molecular biology tool was established by the...

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 viruses have created demand for a cost-effective vaccine to prevent a pandemic of the disease. Here, we report that Trichoplusia ni (T. ni) larvae can act as a cost-effective bioreactor to produce recombinant HA5 (rH5HA) proteins as an potential effective vaccine for chickens. To facilitate the recombinant virus identification, virus titer determina...

Among the wide range of methods and expression hosts available for the heterologous production of recombinant proteins, insect cells are ideal for the production of complex proteins requiring extensive posttranslational modification. This review article provides an overview of the available insect-cell expression systems and their properties, focusing on the widely-used Baculovirus Expression V...

Baculovirus/insect cell expression systems have been in use for several years, often resulting in very high levels of expression of recombinant proteins (1). For expression of mature proteins the preferred vectors, such as pVL941 (2) or p36C (3), utilise the strong polyhedrin promoter and leader sequence. We recently reported the finding that the presence of a 24 bp bacterial sequence immediate...

Although microarray and expressed sequence tag (EST)-based approaches have been used to profile gene expression during baculovirus infection, the response of host genes to baculovirus infection and the interaction between baculovirus and its host remain largely unknown. To determine the host response to Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus infection and the dynamic interaction between the virus and...

The ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter superfamily includes several membrane-bound proteins that are critical to drug pharmacokinetics and disposition. Pharmacologic evaluation of these proteins in vitro remains a challenge. In this study, human ABC transporters were expressed in polarized epithelial cell monolayers transduced using the BacMam baculovirus gene transfer system. The purpose o...