查了一下,找到了这段资料:
Naturally, plasmids are rare in eukaryotic cells. But plasmids carrying both promoter driving large T antigen expression and SV40 origin can replicate in mammalian cells without integration. So, if you transfect cells with pCNDA3 and select cells with G418, you may get stable cell lines with free plasmids (low copy).
As to lentivirus used in gene expression or shRNA, they are deficient virus and lack essential genes for replication and package. So, they can't complete life cycle without the assistance of helper plasmids. That's why you need packaging cells to produce infective particles.
After infection, the DNA will integrate into chromosome and replicate with host genome. This is why gene therapy with lentivirus may cause leukemia. Because the host cells harboring no helper plasmid, no infective virus will be generated.