Bacillus thuringiensis represents one of the six species of "Bacillus cereus group" in the genus Bacillus within the family Bacillaceae. Strain Sbt003 was isolated from soil and identified as B. thuringiensis. It harbors at least seven plasmids and produces three shapes of parasporal crystals including oval, bipyramidal and rice. SDS-PAGE analysis of spore-crystal suspension of this strain reve...

Bacillus thuringiensis is an important entomopathogenic bacterium belongs to the Bacillus cereus group, which also includes B. anthracis and B. cereus. Several genomes of phages originating from this group had been sequenced, but no genome of Siphoviridae phage from B. thuringiensis has been reported. We recently sequenced and analyzed the genome of a novel phage, BtCS33, from a B. thuringiensi...

Two sigma factors, sigma 35 and sigma 28, direct transcription from the Bt I and Bt II promoters of the cryIA(a) gene of Bacillus thuringiensis; this gene encodes a lepidopteran-specific crystal protoxin. These sigma factors were biochemically characterized in previous work (K. L. Brown and H. R. Whiteley, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 85:4166-4170, 1988; K. L. Brown and H. R. Whiteley, J. Bacteri...

Bacillus thuringiensis is the leading biopesticide used to control insect pests worldwide. Although they have a long record of safe use, under certain conditions commercial strains of B. thuringiensis have the ability to produce numerous putative enterotoxins that have been associated with food poisoning attributed to Bacillus cereus. Therefore, we designed a strategy to delete the genes encodi...

AIM To determine the autolytic phenotype of five species in the Bacillus cereus group. METHODS AND RESULTS The autolytic rate of 96 strains belonging to five species in the B. cereus group was examined under starvation conditions at pH 6, 6.5 and 8.5 in different buffers. The autolytic rate was strain-dependent with a wide variability at pH 6, but higher and more uniform at pH 6.5. At pH 8.5,...

To determine the possibility of plasmid transfer occurring between strains of Bacillus thuringiensis in infected lepidopterous larvae, Galleria mellonella and Spodoptera littoralis were infected with two or more strains of B. thuringiensis and the resulting bacteria from the dead insects were examined for plasmid transfer. Transfer rates of plasmids coding for crystal production and tetracyclin...

Bacillus thuringiensis crystal (Cry) proteins are the most widely used biological insecticides in the world. Their value in safely controlling insects that destroy crops and transmit human diseases is well established.Here, we reviewB. thuringiensisCry proteins as novel anthelmintics with a unique mode of action. In laboratory studies, Cry proteins are highly effective against a broad range of ...

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) crops, genetically modified to express insecticidal toxins that target key pests of corn, cotton, rice, potato, and other crops, have been rapidly adopted and have become dominant fixtures in agroecosystems throughout the world. Due to the constitutive nature of Bt toxin expression, insecticidal proteins may be found in nearly all plant tissues, presenting multiple s...

Sichuan basin, situated in the west of China, is the fourth biggest basin in China. In order to describe a systematic study of the cry2-type genes resources from Bacillus thuringiensis strains of Sichuan basin, a total of 791 Bacillus thuringiensis strains have been screened from 2650 soil samples in different ecological regions. The method of PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-R...