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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 May 24.
Published in final edited form as: Methods Mol Biol. 2023;2557:391–416. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2639-9_24

Table 1.

Summary of viral transduction systems

Adenovirus AAV ?-retrovirus Lentivirus Baculovirus Vaccinia
virus		 Herpex
simplex
virus
Genome (kb) dsDNA (8 kb–36 kb) ssDNA (4.8 kb–8.5 kb) ssRNA (7 kb–20 kb) ssRNA (9 kb) dsDNA (80 kb–180 kb) dsDNA (190 kb) dsDNA (150 kb)
Packaging capacity 7.5 kb–8 kb 4.5 kb–5 kb 6 kb–10 kb 8 kb–9 kb < 38 kb 25 kb 30 kb–40 kb
Transduction Dividing/non-dividing cells Dividing/non-dividing cells Dividing cells Dividing/non-dividing cells Dividing/non-dividing cells Dividing cells Dividing/non-dividing cells
Transduction efficiency High Moderate Moderate Moderate Low
Expression Transient Transient or stable Stable Stable Transient or stable Transient Transient
Integration Non-integrating Non-integrating Integrating Integrating Integrating Integrating Non-integrating
Biosafety level BSL-2 BSL-1 BSL-2 BSL-2 BSL-2 BSL-2 BSL-2
Immunogenicity High Low Moderate–high Moderate–high Moderate–high
Gene therapy strategy In vivo In vivo Ex vivo Ex vivo In vivo In vivo & Ex vivo Ex vivo
Superinduction No Yes
Additional notes Elicits strong antiviral immune response. Higher titer. Toxicity. Requires helper virus for replication; difficult to produce pure viral stocks. Small genome limits size of foreign DNA. All viral genes removed. Transduction requires cell division. Relatively low titer. Insertional mutagenesis potential. Limited mammalian host range. Potential cytopathic effects. No gene expression during latent infection.

Table 1 summarizes key features of different viral transduction systems to help choose the appropriate viral vector. Transduction efficiency and packaging capacity are two important factors that dictate the successful insertion of a gene of interest. Inserts that are very large can be accommodated by adenoviruses when special serotyped helper packaging cells lines are used in conjunction with the viral vector. Some viral vectors are non-integrating and therefore only suitable for transient expression, while others can integrate genes into the host genome for stable expression. High immunogenicity can cause toxicity in some systems and may need to be optimized to achieve desired expression levels without inducing immunogenic side effects. The powerful viral transduction system can even be compatible with animal models and thus are useful tools to express a gene of interest in vivo