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Transient Expression of Foreign Genes in Insect Cells sf9 for Protein Functional Assay
Published on: February 22, 2018
Efficient expression of functional human coagulation factor IX in stably-transfected Drosophila melanogaster S2
Jafar Vatandoost1, Mettine H A Bos2
1Department of Biology, Hakim Sabzevari University, Sabzevar, Iran. j.vatan@hsu.ac.ir.
Objective:
To compare stably-transfected Drosophila melanogaster S2 and mammalian Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells for the expression and secretion efficiency of biologically-active human coagulation factor IX (hFIX).
Result:
Selection of an hFIX-expressing cell line derived from stably-transfected S2 cells was performed over 2 weeks, while the same procedure required 2 months for stably-transfected CHO cells. Furthermore, the selected S2 cell line was superior in producing of total hFIX protein (70 % increase), biologically-active hFIX (35 % increase), and specific hFIX activity (20 % increase) relative to the selected CHO cell line. Enrichment for functional, fully γ-carboxylated hFIX species via barium citrate adsorption demonstrated that up to 90 % of the hFIX expressed by S2 cells was γ-carboxylated versus 79 % of CHO-expressed hFIX. Inhibition of N-glycosylation by tunicamycin indicated that N-glycosylation of S2-expressed hFIX had occurred to a similar extent as in the CHO-produced hFIX.
Conclusion:
The Drosophila S2 cell system is an attractive candidate for the efficient production of recombinant hFIX as it has the potential of significantly reducing the cell development time, while producing functional hFIX.

