Synthetic pesticides have a number of ill effects on soil, water, human health, wildlife and ecological balance. These ill effects have led to the use of microbial insecticides against insect pests of order Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Diptera and Hemiptera. Bacillus thuringiensis is a gram-positive endospore forming bacterium that produces a parasporal crystal protein inclusion during sporulation ...

Aiming to develop a DNA marker specific for Bacillus anthracis and able to discriminate this species from Bacillus cereus, Bacillus thuringiensis, and Bacillus mycoides, we applied the randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) fingerprinting technique to a collection of 101 strains of the genus Bacillus, including 61 strains of the B. cereus group. An 838-bp RAPD marker (SG-850) specific for B....

In this study, we determined the complete genome sequence of a mosaic bacteriophage, Waukesha92, which was isolated from soil using Bacillus thuringiensis as the host organism. This temperate Myoviridae bacteriophage has similarities to phages SpaA1 and BceA1 and the Bacillus thuringiensis plasmid pBMB165.

Bacillus thuringiensis is a Gram-positive bacterium that produces intracellular protein crystals toxic to a wide variety of insect larvae. We report the complete genome sequence of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki strain HD73 from the Centre OILB (Institut Pasteur, France), which belongs to serotype 3ab and is toxic to lepidopteran larvae.

Sixteen Escherichia coli clones were assayed against susceptible and Bacillus thuringiensis-resistant Culex quinquefasciatus larvae. The clones expressed different combinations of four genes from Bacillus thuringiensis ssp. israelensis; three genes encoded mosquitocidal toxins (Cry11Aa, Cry4Aa and Cyt1Aa) and the fourth encoded an accessory protein (P20). The cross-resistance spectra of the mos...

The replication origins of three large Bacillus thuringiensis plasmids, derived from B. thuringiensis HD263 subsp. kurstaki, have been cloned in Escherichia coli and sequenced. The replication origins, designated ori 43, ori 44, and ori 60, were isolated from plasmids of 43, 44, and 60 MDa, respectively. Each cloned replication origin exhibits incompatibility with the resident B. thuringiensis ...

The Bacillus cereus group contains vertebrate pathogens such as Bacillus anthracis and Bacillus cereus and the invertebrate pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis. Microbial biopesticides based on B. thuringiensis (Bt) are widely recognized as being among the safest and least environmentally damaging insecticidal products available. Nevertheless, a recent food poisoning incident prompted a European Fo...