An Overview and History of Glyco-Engineering in Insect Expression Systems

Methods Mol Biol. 2015:1321:131-52. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-2760-9_10.

Abstract

Insect systems, including the baculovirus-insect cell and Drosophila S2 cell systems are widely used as recombinant protein production platforms. Historically, however, no insect-based system has been able to produce glycoproteins with human-type glycans, which often influence the clinical efficacy of therapeutic glycoproteins and the overall structures and functions of other recombinant glycoprotein products. In addition, some insect cell systems produce N-glycans with immunogenic epitopes. Over the past 20 years, these problems have been addressed by efforts to glyco-engineer insect-based expression systems. These efforts have focused on introducing the capacity to produce complex-type, terminally sialylated N-glycans and eliminating the capacity to produce immunogenic N-glycans. Various glyco-engineering approaches have included genetically engineering insect cells, baculoviral vectors, and/or insects with heterologous genes encoding the enzymes required to produce various glycosyltransferases, sugars, nucleotide sugars, and nucleotide sugar transporters, as well as an enzyme that can deplete GDP-fucose. In this chapter, we present an overview and history of glyco-engineering in insect expression systems as a prelude to subsequent chapters, which will highlight various methods used for this purpose.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Genetic Engineering / methods
  • Genetic Vectors / genetics
  • Glycoproteins / genetics*
  • Glycosylation
  • Humans
  • Insecta / genetics*
  • Polysaccharides / genetics
  • Recombinant Proteins / genetics*

Substances

  • Glycoproteins
  • Polysaccharides
  • Recombinant Proteins