Baculovirus
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Baculoviridae
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| Virus classification | |
| Group: | Group I (dsDNA) |
| Family: | Baculoviridae |
| Genera | |
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Alphabaculovirus |
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Alphabaculovirus
Betabaculovirus
Deltabaculovirus
Gammabaculovirus
Baculoviridae is a family of viruses. Arthropods, lepidoptera, hymenoptera, diptera, and decapoda serve as natural hosts. There are currently 49 species in this family, divided among 4 genera.
Baculoviruses are known to infect invertebrates, with over 600 host species having been described. Immature (larval) forms of moth species are the most common hosts, but these viruses have also been found infecting sawflies, mosquitoes, and shrimp. Although baculoviruses are capable of entering mammalian cells in culture they are not known to be capable of replication in mammalian or other vertebrate animal cells.
Starting in the 1940s they were used and studied widely as biopesticides in crop fields. Baculoviruses contain circular double-stranded genome ranging from 80 to 180 kbp.
The earliest records of baculoviruses can be found in the literature from as early as the sixteenth century in reports of "wilting disease" infecting silk-producing larva. Starting in the 1940s they were used and studied widely as biopesticides in crop fields. Since the 1990s they have been utilized for producing complex eukaryotic proteins in insect cell cultures (see Sf21, High Five cells). These recombinant proteins have been used in research and as vaccines in both human and veterinary medical treatments (for example, the most widely used vaccine for prevention of H5N1 avian influenza in chickens was produced in a baculovirus expression vector). More recently it has been found that baculoviruses can transduce mammalian cells with a suitable promoter. These medical and potential medical uses have accelerated the number of publications on baculoviruses since 1995.
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Wikipedia