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Bacillus thuringiensis and Lysinibacillus sphaericus pp 41–52Cite as

Bacillus thuringiensis Toxin Classification

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Abstract

Since the first insecticidal crystal toxin genes from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) were cloned and sequenced in the late 1980s, there have been various attempts to classify these proteins in ways that would be useful for scientists working with them. Such methods have generally involved grouping them by either sequence similarity or by toxicity spectra. The former method has the advantage that it is relatively simple to perform but does not necessarily provide information on the biological properties of the protein. Classifying toxins by their activity spectrum is much more informative but is considerably more difficult to achieve due to the need to test the toxin against a range of different target species. More recently, it has been possible to group toxins by structure as the number of proteins with solved structures increases and the methodology for being able to predict structures improves. In this chapter, I will describe how the Bt toxins have been classified since those early days and then move towards our current understanding of toxin classification and characterization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Neil Crickmore

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  1. Neil Crickmore
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Correspondence to Neil Crickmore .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Control Agro Bio Pesquisa e Defesa, Agropecuária Ltda, Porto Alegre, Brazil

    Lidia Mariana Fiuza

  2. Plant Protection Department, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Jaboticabal, Brazil

    Ricardo Antonio Polanczyk

  3. School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

    Neil Crickmore

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Crickmore, N. (2017). Bacillus thuringiensis Toxin Classification. In: Fiuza, L., Polanczyk, R., Crickmore, N. (eds) Bacillus thuringiensis and Lysinibacillus sphaericus. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56678-8_3

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