Oxford Expression Technologies

The original flashBAC vector is still a great choice for most projects where the gene to be expressed is likely to be simple and expressed in the cytoplasm or nucleus of infected cells.

flashBAC™ has been specifically designed to remove the need to separate recombinant virus from parental virus by plaque-purification or any other means. The production of recombinant virus has been reduced to a one-step procedure in insect cells and is thus fully amenable to high throughput and automated production systems.

Click here to see how the flashBAC system works.

Baculovirus genomes contain several auxillary genes, which are non-essential for replication in insect cell culture. One of these is chitinase (chiA), which encodes an enzyme with exo- and endo chitinase activity. In an infected insect, chitinase (together with cathepsin) facilitates host cuticle breakdown and tissue liquefaction at the very late stages of infection, so releasing the virus to infect more hosts.Confocal and electron microscopy observations of insect cells infected with AcMNPV have shown that chitinase is targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum where it is densely packed in a paracrystalline array, severely compromising the function and efficacy of the secretory pathway. Deletion of chiA from flashBAC™ has improved the efficacy ofthe secretory pathway and resulted in a greatly enhanced (up to 60-fold in some instances) yield of recombinant proteins

This one-step procedure greatly facilitates the high throughput production of baculovirus expression vectors via automated systems. However, it is also of benefit to the small research group just requiring one or a few recombinant baculoviruses prepared in individual dishes of cells.