Infecting Sf9 cells on plates

  1. Plate 25x106 cells (split the day before) per 150mm T.C. dish, in total of 15ml(e.g. 12.5 ml cells at 2x106 cells/ml plus 2.5mlmedium). Allow cells to attach 30-60min. Aspirate medium.

  2. Add virus to attached cells. Want m.o.i. of 5, or 1.25x108 pfu for 25x106 cells. For typical Pass 2 or 3 stocks with a titer of 108pfu/ml, therefore use 1.25ml virus per dish. If, in a pinch, you need to use an untitred stock, double the volume, just to be safe. Rock plate gently to spread virus over cells.

  3. Incubate 1h at 280C, rocking dishes every 10 min or so to spread the virus.

  4. Add 10ml fresh medium to each plate and incubate 48h at 280C

  5. 2 days after infection, harvest cells by gently scraping with rubber policeman, to resuspend in medium (do not attempt to wash cells on plate). Keep cells submerged as you scrape to avoid lysis. Transfer suspended cells to 15ml conical tubes, which you may top off with HBS.

  6. Spin 5-10 min at 1000rpm, aspirate supernatant.

  7. Resuspend cell pellet in 1ml per dish lysis buffer (see protocol for making Pass 1 lysate), pipet up and down to resuspend, and transfer to pre-chilled Eppendorf tubes.

  8. Vortex (hard) 15 sec, add 5M NaCl to bring total concentration up to 150mM, vortex 15 sec again.

  9. Spin 20 min at 14 000rpm in cold room microfuge

  10. Collect supernatants and pool extracts form identical infections. This I your crude lysate. Check protein concentration of 2ml and 5ml.

  11. Desalting lysate (optional). Th8is step is to remove small molecules, nucleotides, etc. and seems to help reduce the background of CDK activation seen in crude insect cell lysates. Equilibrate PD10 desalting column (Pharmacia) in 25mM Hepes, pH 7.4; 150mM NaCl; 1mM EDTA; 1mM DTT; 10% glycerol. Note: This is a standard FPLC column buffer, which you can make by mixing appropriate Buffers A (0 salt) and B (1M NaCl) in an 85:15 volume ratio. Follow Pharmacia's directions for equilibrating and loading PD 10 columns exactly. You will end up with 3.5ml of desalted lysate. Re-check protein concentration.