Generation of silkworm lacking silk gland suitable for insect factories

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K19121
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 39:Agricultural and environmental biology and related fields
• Research Institution: Kyushu University
• Principal Investigator: Kusakabe Takahiro 九州大学, 農学研究院, 教授 (30253595)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 門 宏明 九州大学, 農学研究院, 准教授 (30616412)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-07-09 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 絹糸腺 / バキュロウイルス発現系 / カイコ / ゲノム編集

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Silkworm-baculovirus expression system has recently attracted attention as a protein expression system for medical drugs and research reagents. However, some proteins have not been expressed in sufficient amounts, and there is a desire to increase the efficiency of the expression system. In this research, we aimed to increase the production efficiency by creating silk gland-free silkworm and diverting the resources consumed to produce silk glands and silk proteins to the production of exogenous recombinant proteins. The results showed that many silk gland-free silkworms generated by genome editing were stunted and the expression of recombinant proteins was not improved. Therefore, in the latter half of the study, we changed the concept to actively utilize silk glands and created a baculovirus that can efficiently infect silk glands.

Free Research Field

昆虫ゲノム科学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

絹糸腺に効率よく感染するバキュロウイルスについては、変異導入と選抜を繰り返すことにより、絹糸腺に感染しやすくなるウイルスの作製を目指し、６回の絹糸腺での選抜により感染効率が向上したウイルス集団を得た。その集団からウイルスクローンの単離を行い、詳細な解析を進めている。絹糸腺で組換えタンパク質の生産が可能となれば、バキュロウイルス発現系でも繭に組換えタンパク質を生産することが可能となりタンパク質の精製工程が簡略化できる。また、絹糸腺はタンパク質糖鎖の構造が他の組織とは異なっているとの報告があり、ヒト型へ糖鎖改変した組換えタンパク質の生産が容易になると期待される。