A review of alternative promoters for optimal recombinant protein expression in baculovirus-infected insect cells

Generating recombinant proteins in insect cells has been made possible via the use of the Baculovirus Expression Vector System (BEVS). Despite the success of many proteins via this platform, some targets remain a challenge due to issues such as cytopathic effects, the unpredictable nature of co-infection and co-expressions, and baculovirus genome instability. Many promoters have been assayed for the purpose of expressing diverse proteins in insect cells, and yet there remains a lack of implementation of those results when reviewing the landscape of commercially available baculovirus vectors. In advancing the platform to produce a greater variety of proteins and complexes, the development of such constructs cannot be avoided. A better understanding of viral gene regulation and promoter options including viral, synthetic, and insect-derived promoters will be beneficial to researchers looking to utilize BEVS by recruiting these intricate mechanisms of gene regulation for heterologous gene expression. Here we summarize some of the developments that could be utilized to improve the expression of recombinant proteins and multi-protein complexes in insect cells.

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