Silkworm Biofactory

The silk derived from the silkworm has had great economic value for centuries., More recently silkworms have been found to be useful for biomedical purpose. Silkworms have attracted the attention for expressing eukaryotic recombinant proteins, which require post-translational modifications. In 1985 Dr. Susumu Maeda demonstrated that silkworm larvae could produce a functional human -interferon. Since then various techniques have been developed, to express recombinant proteins in silkworm.

Baculovirus based expression system (BES) comes foremost and has been used for a long time. Baculovirus are the ideal vector for carrying desired cDNA as it does not infect or cause diseases to humans or livestock, other than its host. BES is suitable for expressing recombinant proteins in insect cells using Autographa californica multiple nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV). Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) has limited host cells and genetic manipulation kits, thus silkworm was not used for protein production using BmNPV, but only for silk production. However, with development of BmNPV bacmid system, which is capable of replicating in both Escherichia coli and Bombyx mori derived cell lines or silkworm, silkworm larvae or pupae have been used for expression system for the recombinant protein production. This method utilizes the advantage of a bacmid in that it can be easily prepared and screened in E. coli to produce sufficient DNA for subsequent expression in silkworms. This is potentially a big breakthrough in production of recombinant eukaryotic proteins and viruses, which will be a powerful tool in a new proteome era.

This volume contributes to the advancement in the field of life science, for example gene expression system and silkworm research, and focuses on silkworm biofactory for the recombinant protein production and commercial applications of proteins.