ABSTRACT

Protein production is the fundamental and essential step in many biological fields. Nevertheless, protein preparation in native conformation and function is still difficult in some cases, especially for human cell surface molecules. Human cell surface molecules are often highly glycosylated and the glycosylation is necessary for their proper folding and stability. The baculovirus - silkworm expression system, which has similar post-translational modification systems to human ones, is very useful for the preparation of glycosylated cell surface molecules. Baculovirus - silkworm expression system is simple, rapid and low cost method, thus large amount of proteins is expected in a short span. In this chapter, a preparation of human killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor 2DL1 (KIR2DL1) in silkworm is described in detail. Using the baculovirus – silkworm expression system, 0.2 mg of KIR2DL1 proteins was easily obtained from 1 silkworm larva and the purified proteins showed relatively uniform N-linked glycosylation. Through the preparation and functional analysis of KIR2DL1 proteins, the advantages of baculovirus - silkworm expression system for the preparation of human cell surface molecules are shown.