Construction of a host range-expanded hybrid baculovirus of BmNPV and AcNPV, and knockout of cysteinase gene for more efficient expression.

AcNPV (Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus) and BmNPV(Bombyx mori nuclear polyhedrosis virus) are two principal insect-baculovirus expression systems, each having different characteristics. AcNPV has a wider host range and can infect a series of cell lines thus making it suitable for cell suspension culture expression, but the small size of the host insect, A. californica, makes AcNPV less suitable for large scale protein synthesis. In contrast, BmNPV can only infect the silkworm, Bombyx mori, which is well-known for its easy rearing and large size. These characteristics make the BmNPV system especially suitable for large-scale industrial expression. To utilize the advantages of both AcNPV and BmNPV, we tried to expand their host range through homologous recombination and successfully constructed a hybrid baculovirus of AcNPV and BmNPV, designated as HyNPV. The hybrid baculovirus can infect the hosts of both AcNPV and BmNPV. Taking the human basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) gene as an application example, we constructed a recombinant, HyNPV-bFGF. This construct is able to express the bFGF protein both in silkworm larvae and in common-use cell lines, sf21, sf9 and High-five. Moreover, to reduce the loss of recombinant protein due to degradation by proteases that are simultaneously expressed by the baculovirus, we knocked out the cysteinase gene coding for one of the most important baculovirus proteases. This knockout mutation improves the production efficiency of the bFGF recombinant protein.