Baculovirus plaque assay

 I performed a plaque assay for baculovirus. This is an experiment to measure the amount of infective viruses contained in a solution. We check how much cells are killed by the virus infection. In gel containing medium, normal cells can grow, whereas the virus infected cells cannot grow. We call this region plaque. By counting the plaques, we can measure the amount of viruses in a solution.
 We need this information to determine the multiplicity of infection (MOI) of a virus infection experiment. MOI = 1 means that one cell is infected with one virus. If we have 10 million cells in a glass dish, we infect the 10 million plaque forming unit/ml viruses in this dish to get the MOI =1.