Abstract
The Bacillus thuringiensis strain S2160-1 has previously been identified as being highly toxic to mosquito larvae and a viable alternative to strains currently used commercially to control these insects. A PCR approach had identified the presence of four putative insecticidal toxin genes (cry30Ea, cry30 Ga, cry50Ba and cry54Ba) in this strain, but did not identify the genes that encoding three of the main crystal toxin proteins of size 140 and 130 and 30 kDa. In this study we used mass spectrometry to identify the 130 kDa toxin as a rare Cry4 toxin (Cry4Cb3). The gene encoding this toxin was cloned and expressed and the toxin shown to have mosquitocidal activity against Culex quinquefasciatus.
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Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Foundation of Education Bureau of Hainan Province (No. Hjkj2013-19). This research on novel Bt toxin identification was a part of the project of the China National Bt Collection Initiative funded by HITAR since 2005. We acknowledged that the HITAR kindly transferred Bt strain S2160-1 to the Lab of Hainan Normal University for the research use.
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Zhang, W., Zhang, J., Crickmore, N. et al. Identification of a mosquitocidal toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis using mass spectrometry. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 30, 3273–3277 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-014-1744-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-014-1744-7