Oxford Expression Technologies (OET) has introduced Flashbacultra, a baculovirus vector for increased yield and improved quality of expressed protein.
Flashbacultra is OET's latest addition to its Flashbac portfolio of products, which enable the production of multiple recombinant viruses in a one-step process.
Flashbacultra incorporates the deletion of chitinase, cathepsin, P10, P74 and P26 genes from the virus genome.
OET's expression suite of Flashbac products includes Flashbacgold and Flashbacultra, which the company said have a number of benefits compared with other baculovirus expression systems.
These include reduced proteolysis, increased recombinant protein transcription from the polyhedrin promoter, more efficient transport through the endoplasmic reticulum and decreased overall genetic load on the virus genome.
These factors result in increased cellular stability and longevity, increased recombinant protein yield, increased recombinant protein quality, and reduced timelines for protein expression.
One of the most popular protein expression methods is to use baculoviruses (insect-specific viruses) in insect cells in culture.
The gene of interest is inserted into the virus, which infects the cultured insect cells and uses the internal mechanism of the cell to make the protein.
As insects are very close to humans in their genetic make up, the proteins produced are almost identical to human proteins.
A baculovirus is a virus that replicates in the cells of butterflies, moths and caterpillars.
OET's Flashbac technology uses a genetically-engineered form of the virus to enable the infected moth cells in culture to produce large amounts of a given protein through its natural method of replication, making it a suitable vector for small and large scale protein expression systems.
'Our system allows scientists to produce proteins using automated and high-throughput methods - aiding the development of new drugs and more targeted research for understanding how proteins work in health and disease,' said James Bernard of OET.
