A construction strategy for a baculovirus‐silkworm multigene expression system and its application for coexpression of type I and type II interferons

摘要

The nucleopolyhedrovirus ( NPV) baculovirus expression system (BES) is a eukaryotic expression system. It possesses great capability for post‐translation modification in expression of foreign proteins. With the counterselection cassette and phage λ‐Red recombinase, the defective‐rescue NPV BES reBmBac can be employed for efficient heterologous multigene coexpression at different gene sites in one baculovirus genome. In the present study, a recombinant baculovirus, reBm‐Cαγ, carrying two types of chicken interferon (IFN) genes ( and ) was constructed using the reBmBac system. The and genes were inserted into the same baculovirus genome at the and gene sites, respectively. The recombinant baculovirus was capable of coexpressing both chIFN‐α and chIFN‐γ. The expression levels of the two types of IFN in the coexpression product were exponentially high, at approximately 1.7 and 2.5 times higher, respectively, than those in the corresponding single‐expression products. The increase in expression level corresponds to replacement of the nonessential gene in the reBm‐Cαγ recombinant baculovirus. This coexpression of recombinant chicken IFNs showed superior antiviral activity.