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Location of a lepidopteran specificity region in insecticidal crystal protein CryllA from Bacillus thuringiensis
Author(s) -
Liang Y.,
Dean D. H.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
molecular microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.857
H-Index - 247
eISSN - 1365-2958
pISSN - 0950-382X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2958.1994.tb00451.x
Subject(s) - bacillus thuringiensis , lymantria dispar , biology , gypsy moth , aedes aegypti , lepidoptera genitalia , larva , botany , genetics , bacteria
Summary The Bacilius thuringiensis insecticidal crystal protein CryllA has both high mosquito activity and gypsy moth activity; in contrast CryllB, which is 87% homologous, displays no mosquito activity and has a threefold lower gypsy moth activity. The regions responsible for specificity against gypsy moth ( Lymantria dispar ) and mosquito ( Aedes aegypti ) larvae were located by introducing Mlul and Xhol sites into homologous positions within the putative domain ii of both cryllA and cryllB genes, which divided almost equally the respective second domains into three regions. Taking advantage of naturally occurring Nhel and Narl sites that border the putative domain II, a set of seven chimeric proteins were produced by exchanging all combinations of those regions Isetween CryllA and CryllB. Analysis of the toxicity of these chimeric proteins demonstrated that the lepidopteran and dipteran specificity regions of CryllA were not collnear. While the specificity region of CryllA against mosquito larvae involved region 1 and probably also region 2, the specificity region of CryllA against gypsy moth larvae was located within region 2.