Baculovirus Production and Infection in Axolotls

Abstract

Salamanders have served as an excellent model for developmental and tissue regeneration studies. While transgenic approaches are available for various salamander species, their long generation time and expensive maintenance have driven the development of alternative gene delivery methods for functional studies. We have previously developed pseudotyped baculovirus (BV) as a tool for gene delivery in the axolotl (Oliveira et al. Dev Biol 433(2):262–275, 2018). Since its initial conception, we have refined our protocol of BV production and usage in salamander models. In this chapter, we describe a detailed and versatile protocol for BV-mediated transduction in urodeles.