Expression and insecticidal activity of a novel gene cry2ab4 from Bacillus thuringiensis strain B-Pr-88 / 生物工程学报

The full length cry2Ab gene was cloned by PCR-RFLP method from Bt strain B-Pr-88, which was isolated in China with high toxicity to the Lepidopteran insect pests. Nucleic acid sequence analysis showed that this gene was 1902 base pairs encoding 633 amino acids. This cry gene was named cry2Ab4 as a novel gene by Bacillus thuringiensis Delta Endotoxin Nomenclature Committee. The full open reading frame sequence of the cry2Ab4 gene was amplified with a pair of PCR primers L2ab5/L2ab3 designed according to its DNA sequence,and inserted into the BamH I /EcoR I sites of E. coli expression vector pET21b to obtain the recombinant plasmid pET-2Ab4. The result of SDS-PAGE proved that Cry2Ab4 could be expressed as a 60 kD protein in E. coli BL21 (DE3)strain induced by IPTG. Bioassay of the expressed product of the cry2Ab4 gene showed that Cry2Ab4 was highly toxic to the larvae of Helicoverpa armigera and Leguminivora glycinivorella, moderately active to the larvae of Plutella xylostella and Chilo suppressalis, but not insecticidal to the larvae of Spodotera exigua and Ostrinia furnacalis. Our result indicated that cry2Ab4 gene could be used as a novel gene for generation of transgenic plants and engineered microorganism.

Genetically marking of natural biocontrol bacterium Bacillus subtilis strains with green fluorescent protein gene / 生物工程学报

The full length sequence of the promoter and gfp gene were obtained respectively by PCR with two pairs unique primers PxyF/R and primers gfpF/R, which were designed according to the gfp gene and promoter sequence of xylase operon from Bacillus subtilis 168, and the DNA template plasmids pHT315-xyIR and pGFPuv. Furthermore, the fused translational expression cassette PxylR-gfp was constructed using overlapping PCR technique with the primers pair PxyF/gfpR and the mixture of above PCR production. After being digested by Kpn I and Sph I , PxylR-gfp expression cassette was inserted into E. coli-B. thuringiensis shuttle vecter pHT315 and E. coli-B. subtilis shuttle vecter pRP22, and the resulted recombinant plasmids were named as pGFP315 and pGFP22 respectively. Both recombinant plasmids were transferred into B. subtilis lab strain 168 and the resulted transformants are bright green performance under 365 nm UV light. However, only pGFP22 can be introduced into the natural strain B916. The transformants containing pGFP22 have bright green performance under 365 nm UV light and was named B916-gfp. Antifungal activities testing results proved that there is no obvious difference between B916 and the engineered strains B916-gfp. Research results also showed that the stability of B916-gfp was 94% after growth about 175 generations at 37 degrees C, and the losing rate of plasmid was less than 3.5 x 10(-4) per generation.