Patent ID: RE39270

Claim:
A continuous process for the production of a protein of interest in insect larvae, comprising the steps of: a) providing an infected insect larvae food which comprises adding a baculovirus vector to insect larvae food, wherein said baculovirus vector comprising a DNA encoding the protein of interest operatively linked to a gene encoding a green fluorescent protein (GFP) or a GFP mutant, thereby providing a composition of infected insect larvae food; b) continuously infecting insect larvae by feeding said larvae the infected insect larvae food of step (a), thereby resulting in a population of infected insect larvae; c) cultivating the infected insect larvae population of step (b) under suitable conditions for the expression of the protein of interest and the GFP or the GFP mutant by the infected insect larvae population; d) monitoring the infected insect larvae population for the expression of the protein of interest and the GFP or the GFP mutant by measuring the intensity of the fluorescence of GFP or the GFP mutant; e) correlating the intensity of the fluorescence of GFP or the GFP mutant with the amount of the protein of interest expressed; f) harvesting the larvae which express the protein of interest from the population of infected insect larvae; g) recovering the protein of interest from the harvested larvae.