Assembly of fluorescent chimeric virus-like particles of canine parvovirus in insect cells

Canine parvovirus (CPV) is a small non-enveloped ssDNA virus composed of the viral proteins VP1, VP2, and VP3 with a T=1 icosahedral symmetry. VP2 is nested in VP1 and the two proteins are produced by differential splicing of a primary transcript of the right ORF of the viral genome. The VP2 protein can be further proteolytically cleaved to form VP3. Previous studies have shown that VP1 and VP3 are unnecessary for capsid formation and consequently, that VP2 alone is sufficient for assembly. We have hypothesized that insertion of the enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) at the N-terminus of VP2 could be carried out without altering assembly. To investigate the possibility to develop flu…