Baculovirus Amplification

In this video, we demonstrate the technique to isolate baculovirus from an insect cell supernatant using heparin affinity chromatography. The isolation is facilitated by the affinity between the heparin in the column to the baculovirus envelope glycoprotein.

Source: Nasimuzzaman, M., et al. Production and Purification of Baculovirus for Gene Therapy Application. J. Vis. Exp. (2018)This video demonstrates the scalable amplification of high-titer baculovirus in insect suspension culture by sequential infection, incubation, and clarification of viral supernatant, enabling downstream purification for gene delivery and other therapeutic applications.

In this protocol, baculovirus is produced by transient transfection of baculovirus plasmid into Sf9 cells and amplified in a serum-free suspension culture. The supernatant is purified by heparin affinity chromatography and further concentrated by ultracentrifugation. This protocol is useful for the production and purification of baculovirus for gene therapy application.

The baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) is a robust platform for expression screening and production of protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs) to be used for biochemical, biophysical, and structural studies. Milligram quantities of material can be produced for the majority of PRMTs and other proteins of interest requiring a eukaryotic expression platform.

This video shows how virus-like particles, VLPs are generated by infecting insect cells with a recombinant baculovirus carrying the chikungunya virus gene cassette. The recombinant virus infects cells, leading to VLP formation, assembly, and release into the culture medium for potential use in vaccine production.