ABSTRACT
The insect cell-baculovirus system has been widely used either for insecticidal purposes (when cells are infected with wild-type virus) or for foreign gene expression (when cells are infected with a recombinant virus). The latter has broad applicability as an alternative to prokaryotic or other eukaryotic expression systems and has shown great promise recently for the production of biologically active proteins [1], The operation of this system for large-scale production, however, is rather complex and requires progression through three different stages: the growth of cells, infection with virus, and protein expression. As process development has moved toward the increase of culture productivity, there has been an increased need for quick and accurate information on the state of the culture at every stage. Given such information, it should then be the aim at least to predict the performance of subsequent infection and protein expression and, ideally, to manipulate physicochemical parameters in favor of improved production.
