Using Insect Cells For Making Mammalian Proteins

Recombinant protein expression is a major part of biological research. In theory, once the genetic code of a protein is known from cDNA analysis or whole genome sequencing, any polypeptide of interest, existing in nature or perceived, can be artificially produced. Bacteria cells are commonly used to express a variety of proteins because they are more convenient and less costly than other systems. However, a significant percentage of proteins naturally expressed in mammalian cells are not soluble or cannot be easily produced in bacteria such as E. coli. Like bacteria, yeasts are also easy to culture and manipulate, however, although they are eukaryotes, they are not capable of adding “mammalian-like” post-translation modifications (PTM). Insect cells can be used effectively for producing large quantities of mammalian proteins rather easily through baculovirus such as Allele´s Sapphire system. PTM in insect cells is not exactly the same as in mammalian cells, e.g. different glycosylation patterns, but is a lot closer than yeasts. Mammalian cells are used for proteins that require appropriate PTM or are not soluble in other systems through either transient transfection or stable cell line establishment.

For protein expression in insect cells, a number of factors need to be taken into consideration:

1) Genomic DNA for creating baculovirus stocks that will ensure a high percentage of recombinant virus (to avoid wild-type, non-producing virus)
2) Transfer plasmid for cloning the protein-encoding cDNA for easy cloning and appropriate co-expression of helper or marker proteins (such as through insect IRES)
3) Cell lines that have the highest expression levels of a particular protein, sometimes a number of cell lines need to be screened
4) Cell medium, because insect cell medium may contain high levels of ions that can interfere with affinity tag-based purification, one needs to find the most appropriate medium for protein expression
5) Secreted vs nonsecreted proteins. Insect cells need to have their own secretion signal (and translation signal, IRES, polyadinylation, etc.)

More reading…http://www.allelebiotech.com/protein-expression-in-insect-cells/

Tags: baculovirus, BVES, insect cells, insoluble proteins, mammalian proteins, protein expression, PTM, sf21, sf9, T. ni