| dc.description.abstract | Baculoviruses are invertebrate viruses of the family Baculoviridae. They have been isolated from more than 600 orders of arthropods with Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera and Diptera to be the most well-characterized hosts. Baculoviruses are a group of large, circular dsDNA viruses with genomes of 80 to 180 Kbp. They have rod-shaped and enveloped nucleocapsids, replicate in the nucleus of infected host cells and have interesting biological and molecular properties ranging from their practical application as insecticides to their use as expression vectors. Baculovirus life cycle is characterized by a high degree of complexity, which is reflected by the two types of virion phenotypes, which are produced during Baculovirus infection: the Occlusion-Derived-Virions (ODVs) and the Budded Virions (BVs). Although ODVs and BVs are genetically identical, they are characterized by a totally different infectivity profile, which is the reflection of the differences in protein composition, distribution and localization between the ODV and the BV nucleocapsid and envelope. In this thesis, the basic biology of Baculoviruses has been overviewed and the structure and assembly of the BV has been thoroughly examined. On the basis of the available morphological, biological, genomic and phylogenetic data, we provide a more comprehensive picture of the detailed architecture and the elaborate mechanisms of morphogenesis of the nucleocapsid shell, the nucleoprotein core and the envelope of the BV and discuss the structural differences between Baculoviruses and the other large double-stranded DNA viruses of invertebrates. | |
