PhaseII IUCRC at the University of Florida: Center for Arthropod Management Technologies

Among the approximately 700 established insect cell lines, some of them are valuable tools in industrial processes, such as the production of proteins and bioinsecticidal viruses, with a few used in insecticide development and basic research into insect biology. Most insect cell lines are not used or fully cataloged. Their physical locations are murky because many were established and left behind after retirements. Together they represent a potential resource, although such a resource is severely limited because there is no central curation of insect cell lines. A deeper issue is most cell lines were established before the large ‘omics’ databases were developed, and there is very little biological information on the cell lines beyond the source insect species and tissue. We propose using insect cell lines from known sources to generate transcriptomes and proteomes. We will use these large datasets to identify similarities, differences, and unique characteristics among cell lines, focusing on receptors, transporters, metabolic enzymes, and other proteins that are useful for discovery and development of insecticides. This information could also be used to reverse-engineer cell functionalities lost in the biological processes of establishing permanent cell lines.