Magnesium is crucial for baculovirus transmission in Culex nigripalpus (Theobald) and Culex quinquefasciatus (Say) larvae. However, the mechanistic role of magnesium in baculovirus transmission is unknown. To investigate the possible role of host response factors in baculovirus transmission, suppression subtractive hybridization was used to identify genes differentially transcribed after magnes...

The cDNA encoding rat liver carnitine palmitoyltransferase II (CPT-II) was heterologously expressed using a recombinant baculovirus/insect cell system. Unlike Escherichia coli, the baculovirus-infected insect cells expressed mostly soluble active recombinant CPT-II (rCPT-II). CPT activity from crude lysates of recombinant baculovirus-infected insect cells was maximal between 50 and 72 h post-in...

Theileria parva is an intracellular protozoan parasite that causes East Coast fever, a severe lymphoproliferative disease in cattle. Previous attempts to produce recombinant sporozoite surface antigen (p67) in bacterial or insect cells for vaccine purposes have not resulted in a correctly folded protein. Here, we report the expression of N- and C-terminal domains of p67 fused to 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...

Infection-dependent replication assays have been used to identify numerous putative origins of baculovirus replication. However, plasmid DNA, when cotransfected into insect cells with Autographa californica multinucleocapsid nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV) DNA, replicates independently of any viral sequence in cis (11). Cotransfection of transfer plasmids and baculovirus DNA is a common procedure...

One of the major problems in gaining further insight into hepatitis B virus (HBV)/host-cell interactions is to improve the existing cellular models for the study of HBV replication. The first objective of this study was to improve the system based on transduction of HepG2 cells with a recombinant baculovirus to study HBV replication. A new HBV recombinant baculovirus, Bac-HBV-1.1, in which the ...

ScathL is a cathepsin L-like cysteine protease from the flesh fly, Sarcophaga peregrina, that digests components of the basement membrane (BM) during insect metamorphosis. A recombinant baculovirus that expresses ScathL (AcMLF9.ScathL) kills larvae of the tobacco budworm, Heliothis virescens, significantly faster than the wild-type virus and triggers melanization and tissue fragmentation in inf...

Steroid hormone/nuclear receptor expression in cultured insect cell lines is routinely driven by a baculovirus vector. An advantage of the baculovirus production of these receptors is that large amounts of functional receptors are obtained for subsequent in vitro studies. Most laboratories produce nuclear receptors in Spodoptera frugiperda (Sf)9 cells. However, no one has determined whether thi...

Group II nucleopolyhedroviruses (NPVs), e.g. Helicoverpa armigera (Hear) NPV and Spodoptera exigua (Se) MNPV (multiple NPV), lack a GP64-like protein that is present in group I NPVs, e.g. Autographa californica (Ac)MNPV, but have an unrelated envelope fusion protein named F. Three AcMNPV viruses were constructed by introducing AcMNPV gp64, HearNPV f or SeMNPV f genes, respectively, into a gp64-...

The gp37 genes of the Mamestra brassicae and Lymantria dispar multicapsid nucleopolyhedroviruses (MbMNPV and LdMNPV) have been identified and characterized. Both genes were similar to other baculovirus gp37 genes and to entomopoxvirus fusolin genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that baculovirus gp37 genes and entomopoxvirus fusolin genes form two distinct and well-separated clades. There was no...