Patent ID: 7132586

Claim:
A method for producing milligram quantities of a protein of interest for research purposes, comprising: (a) providing an insect transformed with a functional gene encoding the protein of interest by injecting an egg or embryo of an insect with a transposon dependent non-viral DNA vector system comprising a gene encoding the protein of interest flanked by terminal repeats of a transposon, said egg or embryo comprising a transposase protein active on said terminal repeats in said insect, wherein the gene encoding said protein of interest is excised from the non-viral DNA vector by the transposase protein and inserted into the host insect chromosomal DNA; (b) identifying and selecting the progeny of the transformed insect that carry the recombinant transposed gene of interest in their germline; (c) breeding said progeny identified in step (b) to produce larvae; (d) mass rearing a sufficient number of said larvae to produce milligram quantities of said protein of interest; and (e) extracting said protein of interest from the mass reared larvae.