Question

Baculovirus infects insect cell lines and are also pathogenic to humans.

(a) True

(b) False

I have been asked this question by my school teacher while I was bunking the class.

Origin of the question is Products of Animal Cell Cultures topic in section Bioprocess Considerations in Using Animal Cell Cultures of Bioprocess Engineering

Answer 1

Correct option is (b) False

To explain: The baculovirus that infects insect cells is an ideal vector for genetic engineering, because it is nonpathogenic to humans and has a very strong promoter that encodes for a protein that is not essential for virus production in cell culture. The insertion of a gene under the control of this promoter can lead to high expression levels (40% of the total protein as the target protein).