Invertebrate Cell Culture Biology and Novel Cell Lines

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The development in the 1980′s of the application of recombinant DNA technology to express cloned genes in insect host cells led to the remarkable growth and application of cultured insect cells in molecular cell biology research. The emergence of the baculovirus- insect-cell system as a versatile gene expression tool resulted from extensive and elegant studies on the molecular biology of baculoviruses and the establishment of new insect cell culture systems that supported high levels of protein expression. This expression system is now accepted as an important technology for the commercialization of products for use in agriculture and human health. Initially, many established cell lines from embryonic, ovarian, hemocytic, or larval tissues were readily available for use in expression systems. The highly popular Spodoptera frugiperda cell lines (SF21 and its clonal isolate, SF9) established in the 1970′s proved to be very good cells for gene expression. However, new insect cell lines with special characteristics needed to be developed to optimize protein expression. This led to the establishment of new cell lines such as the Trichoplusia ni cell line known as High Five Cells that is known for its very high levels of protein expression. Newly developed cell lines from the Monarch butterfly were shown to have native potential for complex glycosylation. More recently molecular cell engineering was used to stably engineer insect cells lines that expressed higher levels of complex glycans or were more resistant to nutritional or culture stress. Future directions in novel cell line design and development will be in molecular cell engineering and isolation of embryonic stem cell lines with unique properties.

ROBERT R. GRANADOS. Boyce Thompson Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. E-mail: rg28@cornell.edu

Copyright Society for In Vitro Biology Spring 2004