Baculovirus Display: A Novel Tool for Vaccination

Abstract

During its infection cycle it produces two phenotypes. Occlusion derived viruses (ODV) initiate the infection at the larvae midgut. After this primary infection, the viral progeny consists of budded viruses (BV) that carry on the systemic infection in larvae. These types of virions differ in their efficiencies of infection for different cell types; ODV infect midgut epithelial cells up to 10,000 fold more efficiently than BV. In contrast, BV are up to 1,000-fold more efficient at infecting cultured cells than ODV. As the viral propagation in cell culture is mediated by BV phenotype (Rohrmann, 2011), most of the knowledge regarding baculovirus infection cycle is based on studies performed in insect cells infected by BV (Figure 1).