Chapter category: Biotechnology
Transgenic Silkworms That Weave Recombinant Human Collagen into Cocoons
Transgenic Silkworms
Edited by: Katsutoshi YoshizatoISBN: 1-58706-176-7
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Chapter authors:
Masahiro Tomita, Katsuhiko Shimizu and Katsutoshi Yoshizato
The production of recombinant proteins on a large scale remains a major bottleneck in the biotechnology industry. Many recombinant expression systems have been developed using a variety of hosts such as prokaryotes, yeast, insects, mammalian cells, and transgenic animals and plants. The silk gland in the silkworm, Bombyx mori, is one of the organs that possess a very high activity in protein synthesis. Thus, the silkworm could be a host for producing recombinant proteins on a large scale. Recently a piggyBac-based vector was developed for transferring foreign genes into the silkworm, which enables us to yield transgenic silkworms that synthesize the recombinant proteins in their silk glands and weave them into cocoons. As an application of the transgenic silkworm technology as a mass production system of medically useful proteins, we have developed a method for yielding transgenic silkworms that weave human collagens into cocoons. A fusion cDNA was constructed encoding a protein composed of C-propeptide deleted human type III procollagen mini-chain, fibroin light chain (L-chain), and enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP). This cDNA was ligated downstream of a fibroin L-chain promoter and inserted into the piggyBac vector. Silkworm eggs were injected with the vectors to produce the transgenic silkworms. The generated silkworms synthesized the recombinant fusion proteins and secreted them into cocoons. In this chapter, we describe the present status of transgenic silkworm technology as a recombinant protein producing system on a vast scale and discuss its perspective.
Additional chapters from this book:
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Transgenic Silkworms That Weave Recombinant Human Collagen into Cocoons
Masahiro Tomita, Katsuhiko Shimizu and Katsutoshi Yoshizato
The production of recombinant proteins on a large scale remains a major bottleneck in the biotechnology industry. Many recombinant expression systems have been developed using a variety of hosts such ...
Transgenic Analysis of the Biological Functions of a Doublesex Homologue in Bombyx mori
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In D. melanogaster, a well-characterized cascade of genes, called the ‘sex determination cascade,’ is known to control somatic sex determination and differentiation.1-4 The primary genetic signa...
Use of piggyBac and a Sindbis Virus for Foreign Gene Expression and RNAi in the Silkworm
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Research on insects cannot advance without developing efficient methods for gene transfer, forced expression and silencing in vivo. Here we present recent developments of heat-inducible gene misexpr...
Preface
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Small noncoding RNAs are common to bacterial plasmids, phages and transposons, in which they regulate biological processes by acting as antisense RNAs. By contrast, only few small, noncoding R...
