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Amorós Morales LC, Marchesini A, Gómez Bergna SM, García Fallit M, Tongiani SE, Vásquez L, Ferrelli ML, Videla-Richardson GA, Candolfi M, Romanowski V, Pidre ML. PluriBAC: A Versatile Baculovirus-Based Modular System to Express Heterologous Genes in Different Biotechnological Platforms. Viruses 2023; 15:1984. [PMID: 37896762 PMCID: PMC10610652 DOI: 10.3390/v15101984] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2023] [Revised: 09/14/2023] [Accepted: 09/22/2023] [Indexed: 10/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Baculoviruses are insect-specific pathogens widely used in biotechnology. In particular, the Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV) has been exploited as a platform for bio-inputs production. This is why the improvement of the technologies used for the production of recombinant baculoviruses takes on particular relevance. To achieve this goal, we developed a highly versatile baculoviral transfer vector generation system called PluriBAC. The PluriBAC system consists of three insert entry levels using Golden Gate assembly technology. The wide availability of vectors and sticky ends allows enough versatility to combine more than four different promoters, genes of interest, and terminator sequences. Here, we report not only the rational design of the PluriBAC system but also its use for the generation of baculoviral reporter vectors applied to different fields of biotechnology. We demonstrated that recombinant AcMNPV baculoviruses generated with the PluriBAC system were capable of infecting Spodoptera frugiperda larvae. On the other hand, we found that the recombinant budded virions (BV) generated using our system were capable of transducing different types of tumor and normal cells both in vitro and in vivo. Our findings suggest that the PluriBAC system could constitute a versatile tool for the generation of insecticide and gene therapy vectors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leslie C. Amorós Morales
- Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular (IBBM, UNLP-CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata B1900, Argentina; (L.C.A.M.); (A.M.); (S.M.G.B.); (S.E.T.); (L.V.); (M.L.F.); (V.R.)
| | - Abril Marchesini
- Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular (IBBM, UNLP-CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata B1900, Argentina; (L.C.A.M.); (A.M.); (S.M.G.B.); (S.E.T.); (L.V.); (M.L.F.); (V.R.)
| | - Santiago M. Gómez Bergna
- Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular (IBBM, UNLP-CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata B1900, Argentina; (L.C.A.M.); (A.M.); (S.M.G.B.); (S.E.T.); (L.V.); (M.L.F.); (V.R.)
| | - Matías García Fallit
- Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas (INBIOMED, UBA-CONICET), Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires C1121A6B, Argentina; (M.G.F.); (M.C.)
| | - Silvana E. Tongiani
- Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular (IBBM, UNLP-CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata B1900, Argentina; (L.C.A.M.); (A.M.); (S.M.G.B.); (S.E.T.); (L.V.); (M.L.F.); (V.R.)
| | - Larisa Vásquez
- Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular (IBBM, UNLP-CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata B1900, Argentina; (L.C.A.M.); (A.M.); (S.M.G.B.); (S.E.T.); (L.V.); (M.L.F.); (V.R.)
| | - María Leticia Ferrelli
- Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular (IBBM, UNLP-CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata B1900, Argentina; (L.C.A.M.); (A.M.); (S.M.G.B.); (S.E.T.); (L.V.); (M.L.F.); (V.R.)
| | - Guillermo A. Videla-Richardson
- Fundación Para la Lucha Contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia (FLENI), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires C1121A6B, Argentina;
| | - Marianela Candolfi
- Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas (INBIOMED, UBA-CONICET), Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires C1121A6B, Argentina; (M.G.F.); (M.C.)
| | - Víctor Romanowski
- Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular (IBBM, UNLP-CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata B1900, Argentina; (L.C.A.M.); (A.M.); (S.M.G.B.); (S.E.T.); (L.V.); (M.L.F.); (V.R.)
| | - Matías L. Pidre
- Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular (IBBM, UNLP-CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata B1900, Argentina; (L.C.A.M.); (A.M.); (S.M.G.B.); (S.E.T.); (L.V.); (M.L.F.); (V.R.)
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Jansen Z, Reilly SR, Lieber-Kotz M, Li AZ, Wei Q, Kulhanek DL, Gilmour AR, Thyer R. Interrogating the Function of Bicistronic Translational Control Elements to Improve Consistency of Gene Expression. ACS Synth Biol 2023; 12:1608-1615. [PMID: 37253269 DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.3c00093] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
Context independent gene expression is required for genetic circuits to maintain consistent and predicable behavior. Previous efforts to develop context independent translation have leveraged the helicase activity of translating ribosomes via bicistronic design translational control elements (BCDs) located within an efficiently translated leader peptide. We have developed a series of bicistronic translational control elements with strengths that span several orders of magnitude, maintain consistent expression levels across diverse sequence contexts, and are agnostic to common ligation sequences used in modular cloning systems. We have used this series of BCDs to investigate several features of this design, including the spacing of the start and stop codons, the nucleotide identity upstream of the start codon, and factors affecting translation of the leader peptide. To demonstrate the flexibility of this architecture and their value as a generic modular expression control cassette for synthetic biology, we have developed a set of robust BCDs for use in several Rhodococcus species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zachary Jansen
- Systems, Synthetic, and Physical Biology, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, United States
| | - Sophia R Reilly
- Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, United States
| | - Matan Lieber-Kotz
- Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, United States
| | - Andrew Z Li
- Department of Statistics, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, United States
| | - Qiyao Wei
- Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, United States
| | - Devon L Kulhanek
- Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, United States
| | - Andrew R Gilmour
- Systems, Synthetic, and Physical Biology, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, United States
| | - Ross Thyer
- Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, United States
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Campbell AM, Eckdahl TT. rClone Red facilitates bacterial gene expression research by undergraduates in the teaching laboratory. Synth Biol (Oxf) 2018; 3:ysy013. [PMID: 32995521 PMCID: PMC7445756 DOI: 10.1093/synbio/ysy013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/23/2018] [Revised: 06/30/2018] [Accepted: 07/30/2018] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
rClone Red is a low-cost and student-friendly research tool that has been used successfully in undergraduate teaching laboratories. It enables students to perform original research within the financial and time constraints of a typical undergraduate environment. Students can strengthen their understanding of the initiation of bacterial translation by cloning ribosomal binding sites of their own design and using a red fluorescent protein reporter to measure translation efficiency. Online microbial genome sequences and the mFold website enable students to explore homologous rRNA gene sequences and RNA folding, respectively. In this report, we described how students in a genetics course who were given the opportunity to use rClone Red demonstrated significant learning gains on 16 of 20 concepts, and made original discoveries about the function of ribosome binding sites. By combining the highly successful cloning method of golden gate assembly with the dual reporter proteins of green fluorescent protein and red fluorescent protein, rClone Red enables novice undergraduates to make new discoveries about the mechanisms of translational initiation, while learning the core concepts of genetic information flow in bacteria.
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Affiliation(s)
- A Malcolm Campbell
- Biology Department, Davidson College, Davidson, NC, USA.,Martin Genomics Program, Davidson College, Davidson, NC, USA
| | - Todd T Eckdahl
- Biology Department, Missouri Western State University, Saint Joseph, MO, USA
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Abstract
The goal of this protocol is to allow for the rapid verification of bioinformatically identified terminators. Further, the plasmid (pGR-Blue) is designed specifically for this protocol and allows for the quantification of terminator efficiency. As a proof of concept, six terminators were bioinformatically identified in the mycobacteriophage Bernal13. Once identified, terminators were then made as oligonucleotides with the appropriate sticky ends and annealed together. Using Golden Gate Assembly (GGA), terminators were then cloned into pGR-Blue. Under visible light, false positive colonies appear blue and positively transformed colonies are white/yellow. After induction of an arabinose inducible promoter (pBad) with arabinose, colony strength can be determined by measuring the ratio of green fluorescent protein (GFP) produced to red fluorescent protein (RFP) produced. With pGR-Blue, the protocol can be completed in as little as three days and is ideal in an educational setting. Additionally, results show that this protocol is useful as a means for understanding in silico predictions of terminator efficiency related to the regulation of transcription.
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