While they have proven to be very successful commercially, these genetically engineered, insect-resistant crop plants provide resistance to only a narrow range of the economically important insect pests. These genetically engineered crops are now widely used in agriculture and have provided the farmer with an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional insect-control methods. For example, corn and cotton plants have been genetically engineered to produce pesticidal proteins isolated from strains of Bt. Microbial insecticides, particularly those obtained from Bacillus strains, have played an important role in agriculture as alternatives to chemical pest control.Ĭrop plants have been developed with enhanced insect resistance by genetically engineering crop plants to produce pesticidal proteins from Bacillus. Insect pathogenicity has also been attributed to strains of B. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and Bacillus popilliae are among the most successful biocontrol agents discovered to date. In addition, biopesticides often cost less to produce and thus improve economic yield for a wide variety of crops.Ĭertain species of microorganisms of the genus Bacillus are known to possess pesticidal activity against a range of insect pests including Lepidoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, Hemiptera and others.
Generally speaking, the use of biopesticides presents a lower risk of pollution and environmental hazards and biopesticides provide greater target specificity than is characteristic of traditional broad-spectrum chemical insecticides. BACKGROUNDīiological control of insect pests of agricultural significance using a microbial agent, such as fungi, bacteria or another species of insect affords an environmentally friendly and commercially attractive alternative to synthetic chemical pesticides. These pesticidal proteins and the nucleic acid sequences that encode them are useful in preparing pesticidal formulations and in the production of transgenic pest-resistant plants. Provided are novel genes that encode pesticidal proteins. This disclosure relates to the field of molecular biology. The sequence listing contained in this ASCII formatted document is part of the specification and is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. 14, 2015, and having a size of 255 kilobytes and is filed concurrently with the specification. The official copy of the sequence listing is submitted electronically via EFS-Web as an ASCII formatted sequence listing with a file named “6584WOPCT_sequence_listing” created on Sep.
REFERENCE TO SEQUENCE LISTING SUBMITTED ELECTRONICALLY 16, 2014, which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
14, 2015, which claims the benefit of U.S. This application is a 371 (National Stage) of PCT/US15/55502 filed Oct.