Expression of the human dbl-oncogene and proto-oncogene products in insect cells using a baculovirus vector.

Among the expression vectors, the baculovirus system has been successfully developed and it has been shown to be suitable as a helper-independent viral expression vector for high level of production of recombinant proteins in cultured insect cells. The high efficiency of this system derives from the viral strong promoter of the polyhedrin gene. Recombinant viruses containing foreign DNA inserted into the polyhedrin gene, will no longer produce polyhedrin and will form plaques morphologically different from the plaques produced by the wild type virus. We have expressed, at high level, the dbl and proto-dbl proteins using the baculovirus system. dbl and proto-dbl gene products produced in insect cells resulted to have the same post-translational modifications and subcellular localization observed in dbl and proto-dbl transfectants.