Project description:Bacillus thuringiensis has insecticidal activity against a variety of important agricultural pests and exhibits good bacteriostatic resistance to a variety of plant pathogens, and recentily study have shown that two strains of Bt (B88-82 and RG1-6 Strain) can induce the tomato to produce resistance to R. solanacearum. However, only the induced signal pathway has been studied, and its active substances are not reported. The aim of this study was to further explore the Bt strain that could induce plant disease resistance and study the induced activity of the Bt strain, and to study the signal pathway induced by transcriptional sequencing and fluorescence quantitative PCR. The results showed that there were 303 differentially expressed genes in rape after induction of 4F5 strain, among which 86 genes were up-regulated and 217 genes weredown-regulated. The result of 4BM1 strain induction was induced by transcriptase sequencing. There were 126 differentially expressed genes in rape. Among which 64 genes were up-regulated and 62 genes were down-regulated. The analysis of these differentialexpression genes revealed that they contained Salicylic acid pathway and Ethylene pathway-related genes, which need to be further verified.
Project description:Host-pathogen interactions result in complex relationship, many aspects of which are not completely understood. Vip proteins, which are Bacillus thuringensis (Bt) insecticidal toxins produced during the vegetative stage, are selectively effective against specific insect pests. This new group of Bt proteins represents an interesting alternative to the classical Bt Cry toxins because current data suggests that they do not share the same mode of action. We have designed and developed a genome-wide microarray for the beet armyworm Spodoptera exigua, a serious lepidopteran pest of many agricultural crops, and used it to better understand how Lepidopteran larvae respond to the treatment with the insecticidal protein Vip3Aa. With this approach, the goal of our study was to evaluate the changes in gene expression levels caused by treatment with sublethal doses (causing 99% growth inhibition) of Vip3Aa at 8 and 24 h after treatment. Results indicated that the toxin provoked a wide transcriptional response, with 19% of unigenes in the microarray responding significantly to treatment. The number of up- and down-regulated unigenes was very similar.. The number of genes whose expression was regulated at 8 h was similar to the number of genes whose expression was regulated after 24 h of treatment. The up-regulated sequences were enriched for genes involved in innate immune response and in pathogen response such as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and repat genes. The down-regulated sequences were mainly unigenes with homology to genes involved in metabolism. Genes related to the mode of action of Bt Cry proteins were found, in general, to be slightly overexpressed. The present study is the first genome-wide analysis of the response of lepidopteran insects to Vip3Aa intoxication. An insight into the molecular mechanisms and components related to Vip intoxication will allow designing of more effective management strategies for pest control.
Project description:Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) toxins are increasingly used for mosquito control, but little is known about the precise mode of action of each of these toxins, and how they interact to kill mosquito larvae. By using RNA sequencing, we investigated change in gene transcription level and polymorphismvariations associatedwith resistance to each Bti Cry toxin and to the full Bti toxin mixture in the dengue vector Aedes aegypti. The upregulation of genes related to chitin metabolismin all selected strain suggests a generalist, non-toxin-specific response to Bti selection in Aedes aegypti. Changes in the transcription level and/or protein sequences of several putative Cry toxin receptors (APNs, ALPs, α-amylases, glucoside hydrolases, ABC transporters) were specific to each Cry toxin. Selective sweeps associated with Cry4Aa resistancewere detected in 2 ALP and 1 APNgenes. The lack of selection of toxin-specific receptors in the Bti-selected strain supports the hypothesis that Cyt toxin acts as a receptor for Cry toxins in mosquitoes.
Project description:Host-pathogen interactions result in complex relationship, many aspects of which are not completely understood. Vip proteins, which are Bacillus thuringensis (Bt) insecticidal toxins produced during the vegetative stage, are selectively effective against specific insect pests. This new group of Bt proteins represents an interesting alternative to the classical Bt Cry toxins because current data suggests that they do not share the same mode of action. We have designed and developed a genome-wide microarray for the beet armyworm Spodoptera exigua, a serious lepidopteran pest of many agricultural crops, and used it to better understand how Lepidopteran larvae respond to the treatment with the insecticidal protein Vip3Aa. With this approach, the goal of our study was to evaluate the changes in gene expression levels caused by treatment with sublethal doses (causing 99% growth inhibition) of Vip3Aa at 8 and 24 h after treatment. Results indicated that the toxin provoked a wide transcriptional response, with 19% of unigenes in the microarray responding significantly to treatment. The number of up- and down-regulated unigenes was very similar.. The number of genes whose expression was regulated at 8 h was similar to the number of genes whose expression was regulated after 24 h of treatment. The up-regulated sequences were enriched for genes involved in innate immune response and in pathogen response such as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and repat genes. The down-regulated sequences were mainly unigenes with homology to genes involved in metabolism. Genes related to the mode of action of Bt Cry proteins were found, in general, to be slightly overexpressed. The present study is the first genome-wide analysis of the response of lepidopteran insects to Vip3Aa intoxication. An insight into the molecular mechanisms and components related to Vip intoxication will allow designing of more effective management strategies for pest control. Changes in gene expression levels caused by treatment with sublethal doses (causing 99% growth inhibition) of Vip3Aa were measured at 8 and 24 h after treatment by means of custom Spodoptera exigua microarray. Six to seven larvae were used for each time point and three independent experiments were performed at each time point.
Project description:We investigated the gene expression and metabolic regulatory mechanisms associated with the high-level accumulation of ICPs by performing the transcriptomics analysis of B. thuringiensis strain CT-43, using Illumina high throughout sequencing (RNA-seq) technique.
Project description:In Bacillus thuringiensis CT-43, five insecticidal crystal proteins (ICPs, Cry protein) are encoded. We extracted the Cry proteins, ran the SDS PAGE (two Cry protein bands were observed), and tried to identify the composition of the two Cry protein bands in the SDS PAGE. The bioinformatics pipeline is described as follows: First, we converted the original mass spectrum files to the mgf file (peaks file), then the mgf files were searched against the Bacillusthuringiensis CT-43 protein database using Mascot (version 2.3.02). The search parameters were: i) trypsin was chosen as the enzyme with one missed cleavage allowed; ii) the fixed modifications of carbamidomethylation were set as Cys, and variable modifications of oxidation as Met; iii) peptide tolerance was set as 0.05 Da, and MS/MS tolerance was set as 0.1 Da. The peptide charge was set as Mr, and monoisotopic mass was chosen. An automatic decoy database search strategy was employed to estimate the false discovery rate (FDR). The FDR was calculated as the false positive matches divided by the total matches. In the final search results, the FDR was less than 1.5%.
Project description:To determine Sigma 54 (SigL) reglons in Bacillus thuringiensis HD73 strain, A sigLmutant, HD(ΔsigL::kan), was constructed with insertion of kanamycin resistance gene cassete. We have employed whole genome microarray expression profiling as a discovery platform to identify the difference of gene expression between mutant and wild-type strains.
Project description:In the past decade, the paradigm which claimed that invertebrate immune systems lack specificity has been reconsidered. Accumulating evidence supports that invertebrate immune systems are able to mount specific responses to the pathogen species-, and even to the pathogen strain-level. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms behind invertebrate immune specificity remain mostly unknown. Studying the molecular basis of invertebrate immune specificity in a genetically tractable model, such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, has the potential to reveal insights into the immune systems of other metazoans, including humans. We chose to study the mechanisms of specific immune responses of the worm to two different pathogenic strains of the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (MYBY18247 and MYBT18679), because there is phenotypic evidence of specific genotype-genotype interactions between this host-pathogen pair. We did an initial RNA-Seq experiment upon pathogen exposure and found that 9% of the differentially expressed genes change their expression in different ways when comparing the two pathogen strains. Through promoter region motif enrichment analysis, we found the GATA transcription factor ELT-2 is responsible for the pathogen strain-specific transcriptomic response. Upon elt-2 knockdown worms exposed to MYBT18679 display lower survival rate coupled with higher intestinal damage than non-infected controls. Additionally, by performing further genetic analysis using gene knockdown and knockout, we found that the p38 MAPK pathway acts likely in parallel to elt-2 and the transcription factor skn-1 cooperates with elt-2 to promote resistance to MYBT18679. On the other hand, elt-2 knockdown leads to a substantially higher survival rate, together with lower intestinal tissue damage compared to control worms, upon exposure to MYBT18247, another pathogenic Bacillus thuringiensis strain. The MYBT18247 pathogen load of elt-2(RNAi) worms compared to control worms remained unchanged, suggesting the elt-2 negatively regulates tolerance towards MYBT18247. We found that tolerance to MYBT18247 was positively regulated by the transcription factors: FOXO daf-16, bZip zip-2, nhr-99 and nhr-193. To identify elt-2 negatively-regulated downstream targets that could promote tolerance to MYBT18247, we performed a second RNA-Seq experiment, this time including elt-2(RNAi) worms exposed to both pathogenic strains. We found four genes negatively regulated by elt-2: cdr-2, poml-3, dhs-30 and tre-3, with putative function in detoxification and lipid metabolism, which can mediate tolerance to MYBT18247. We conclude that ELT-2 coordinates strain-specific immune responses in this invertebrate host and promotes resistance upon exposure to MYBT18679, while it negatively regulates tolerance to MYBT18247. The response is likely to be specific to the crystal pore-forming toxins produced by this pathogen.