Improvements to the throughput of recombinant protein expression in the baculovirus/insect cell system

Protein Expr Purif. 2005 Jul;42(1):29-36. doi: 10.1016/j.pep.2005.03.021. Epub 2005 Apr 11.

Abstract

Recombinant baculoviruses have proved to be a very useful means to express many proteins over the last 20 years. Since their introduction, there have been a number of significant improvements that have simplified and speeded up the construction of baculoviruses. One of the most commonly used methods relies upon recombination with the baculovirus genome maintained in Escherichia coli. In this paper, we report the conversion of nearly all the steps in this process including the expression testing and purification to a multi-well plate format. This enables a significant increase in the number of constructs that can be processed in a shorter period of time and an order of magnitude increase in the number of expression conditions that can be analysed. A key step in our process is that the transfection is done in suspension rather than adherent cells, which gives a much higher virus titre than in the standard methods.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Baculoviridae / genetics*
  • Cell Culture Techniques / methods
  • Cell Line
  • Cell Proliferation
  • Escherichia coli / genetics
  • Gene Expression / genetics*
  • Genetic Vectors / genetics
  • Histidine / genetics
  • Recombinant Proteins / biosynthesis*
  • Recombinant Proteins / isolation & purification
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Spodoptera
  • Transfection / methods

Substances

  • Recombinant Proteins
  • polyhistidine
  • Histidine