Insect cell culture: virus replication and applications in biotechnology

Abstract

Insect cell lines have been initiated since the 1930s and were used to replicate insect baculoviruses as well as arboviruses. Since the latter group of viruses cause serious diseased in man and equines, efforts were expended to characterize the viruses in the new cell lines in attempts to understand the replication cycle at the cellular and molecular levels. Soon it was realized that insect baculoviruses have a potential as viable alternatives to chemicals in the control of agricultural and forest insect pests. The cell lines provided excellent tools to understand the molecular biology of baculoviruses before wide-scale use in the field. During these investigastions, it came to light that baculoviruses can be exploited as vectors for the expression of exogenous proteins and vaccines. The amenability of the virus to genetic modifications and the increasing numbers of permissive cell lines opened new avenues in protein expression. However, not all baculoviruses were able to replicate in cell lines. Indeed, there are no cell lines permissive to viruses belonging to the genera Gammabaculvirus and Deltabaculovirus. Some entomopoxviruses have been replicated in a few cell lines and this paper reports the replication of an entomopoxvirus from the spruce budworm in a homologous cell line.