Abstract
Baculoviruses and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are biological control agents used for the control of agricultural insect pests and also insect vectors of human diseases. The expression of Cry proteins in insect cells using recombinant baculoviruses has been shown to be an alternative means of production of these proteins for functional and/or structural studies. The combination of the insecticidal activity of Bt and baculovirus lethal infection also has the potential to improve viral pathogenicity toward their insect hosts. The easy manipulation of baculovirus genomes and the increased number of full baculovirus genome sequences available could facilitate the expression of Cry proteins and, besides improving their pathogenicity, also retard the development of resistant insects to both Cry proteins and virus replication. In this chapter, the construction of recombinant baculoviruses containing different cry genes (cry1, cry2, cry4, cry10, and cry11) and the expression of the corresponding Cry proteins in insect cells and insect larvae are described.
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