title: Recombinant baculovirus vectors expressing glutathione-S-transferase fusion proteins.
abstract: Recombinant baculoviruses are a popular means of producing heterologous protein in eukaryotic cells. Purification of recombinant proteins away from the insect cell background can, however, remain an obstacle for many developments. Recently, prokaryotic fusion protein expression systems have been developed allowing single-step purification of the heterologous protein and specific proteolytic cleavage of the affinity tag moiety from the desired antigen. Here we report the introduction of these attributes to the baculovirus system. "Baculo-GEX" vectors enable baculovirus production of fusion proteins with the above advantages, but in a eukaryotic post-translational processing environment. Glutathione-S-transferase (GST) fusions are stable cytoplasmic proteins in insect cells and may therefore be released by sonication alone, avoiding the solubility problems and detergent requirements of bacterial systems. Thus large amounts of authentic antigen may be purified in a single, non-denaturing step.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: A H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Davies
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Jowett
authors.forename: I M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Jones
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D016367:Baculoviridae / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D002460:Cell Line; D015870:Gene Expression; D005822:Genetic Vectors; D005982:Glutathione Transferase / Q000235:genetics*; D008562:Membrane Glycoproteins / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009036:Moths; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D012191:Retroviridae Proteins / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D008562:Membrane Glycoproteins; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins; D012191:Retroviridae Proteins; C082614:SIV envelope protein gp41; D005982:Glutathione Transferase