Bacillus thuringiensis: From biopesticides to anticancer agents

Santos, Edclécia N.; Menezes, Lorenna P.; Dolabella, Silvio Santana; Santini, Antonello; Severino, Patrícia; Capasso, Raffaele; Zielińska, Aleksandra; Souto, Eliana B.; Jain, Sona

doi:10.1016/j.biochi.2021.10.003

Cited by 23 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Currently, many Bacillus species are important and beneficial agricultural microorganisms, and the products developed from these Bacillus species are widely applied as biological insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers and biostimulants [21,36,37]. In this report, 13 Bacillus strains were isolated according to the difference in colony morphology from the PBL frass from enoki SMSs, and the bioassay data showed that many isolates of these strains have good antifungal and growth promotion activities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Characterization of Microorganisms from Protaetia brevitarsis Larva Frass

Xuan

Gao

et al. 2022

Microorganisms

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Decomposers play an important role in the biogeochemical cycle. Protaetia brevitarsis larvae (PBLs) can transform wastes into frass rich in humic acid (HA) and microorganisms, which may increase the disease resistance of plants and promote plant growth. Beyond HA, the microorganisms may also contribute to the biostimulant activity. To address this hypothesis, we investigated the potential microbial community in the PBL frass samples and elucidated their functions of disease resistance and plant growth promotion. High-throughput sequencing analysis of four PBL-relevant samples showed that their frass can influence the microbial community of the surrounding environment. Further analysis showed that there were many microorganisms beneficial to agriculture, such as Bacillus. Therefore, culturable Bacillus microbes were isolated from frass, and 16S rDNA gene analysis showed that Bacillus subtilis was the dominant species. In addition, some Bacillus microorganisms isolated from the PBL frass had antibacterial activities against pathogenic fungi. The plant growth promotion pot experiment also proved that some strains promote plant growth. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the microorganisms in the PBL frass are conducive to colonizing the surrounding organic matrix, which will help beneficial microbes to increase the disease resistance of plants and promote plant growth.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Characterization of Microorganisms from Protaetia brevitarsis Larva Frass

Xuan

Gao

et al. 2022

Microorganisms

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“…Previous research has demonstrated that specific Bacillus strains, including Bacillus amyloliquefaciens , Bacillus cereus , and Bacillus subtilis , exhibit anticancer activity [ 75 – 77 ]. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a widely recognized biopesticide in the market, has also been found to exhibit specific activity against various human cancer cell lines [ 78 ]. The parasporin produced by B. thuringiensis has been found to exhibit cytotoxic effects on cancer cells while remaining non-toxic to peripheral blood mononuclear cells [ 79 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity and Functionality of Bacteria Associated with Different Tissues of Spider Heteropoda venatoria Revealed through Integration of High-Throughput Sequencing and Culturomics Approaches

Zhao,

Zhang,

Xiao

et al. 2024

Microb Ecol

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Spiders host a diverse range of bacteria in their guts and other tissues, which have been found to play a significant role in their fitness. This study aimed to investigate the community diversity and functional characteristics of spider-associated bacteria in four tissues of Heteropoda venatoria using HTS of the 16S rRNA gene and culturomics technologies, as well as the functional verification of the isolated strains. The results of HTS showed that the spider-associated bacteria in different tissues belonged to 34 phyla, 72 classes, 170 orders, 277 families, and 458 genera. Bacillus was found to be the most abundant bacteria in the venom gland, silk gland, and ovary, while Stenotrophomonas, Acinetobacter, and Sphingomonas were dominant in the gut microbiota. Based on the amplicon sequencing results, 21 distinct cultivation conditions were developed using culturomics to isolate bacteria from the ovary, gut, venom gland, and silk gland. A total of 119 bacterial strains, representing 4 phyla and 25 genera, with Bacillus and Serratia as the dominant genera, were isolated. Five strains exhibited high efficiency in degrading pesticides in the in vitro experiments. Out of the 119 isolates, 28 exhibited antibacterial activity against at least one of the tested bacterial strains, including the pathogenic bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumanii, and Enterococcus faecalis. The study also identified three strains, GL312, PL211, and PL316, which exhibited significant cytotoxicity against MGC-803. The crude extract from the fermentation broth of strain PL316 was found to effectively induce apoptosis in MGC-803 cells. Overall, this study offers a comprehensive understanding of the bacterial community structure associated with H. venatoria. It also provides valuable insights into discovering novel antitumor natural products for gastric cancer and xenobiotic-degrading bacteria of spiders.

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“…The specific identification of BA is hampered due to the high genetic similarity in this group [ 2 , 6 , 8 , 29 , 32 , 33 ]—especially to the two members Bacillus cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis , which have a sequence similarity of over 99% compared to BA [ 8 ]. The fact that these two species occur ubiquitously further complicates the identification of BA [ 2 , 8 , 33 , 34 ]. The main difference between these three species is the presence of the two extrachromosomal virulence plasmids pXO1 and pXO2 in BA, which are responsible for its pathogenicity [ 2 , 4 , 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of Universally Applicable and Species-Specific Marker Peptides for Bacillus anthracis

Witt

Galante

Andreotti

et al. 2022

Life

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Anthrax is a zoonotic infection caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis (BA). Specific identification of this pathogen often relies on targeting genes located on two extrachromosomal plasmids, which represent the major pathogenicity factors of BA. However, more recent findings show that these plasmids have also been found in other closely related Bacillus species. In this study, we investigated the possibility of identifying species-specific and universally applicable marker peptides for BA. For this purpose, we applied a high-resolution mass spectrometry-based approach for 42 BA isolates. Along with the genomic sequencing data and by developing a bioinformatics data evaluation pipeline, which uses a database containing most of the publicly available protein sequences worldwide (UniParc), we were able to identify eleven universal marker peptides unique to BA. These markers are located on the chromosome and therefore, might overcome known problems, such as observable loss of plasmids in environmental species, plasmid loss during cultivation in the lab, and the fact that the virulence plasmids are not necessarily a unique feature of BA. The identified chromosomally encoded markers in this study could extend the small panel of already existing chromosomal targets and along with targets for the virulence plasmids, may pave the way to an even more reliable identification of BA using genomics- as well as proteomics-based techniques.

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Bacillus thuringiensis: From biopesticides to anticancer agents

Cited by 23 publications

References 47 publications

Characterization of Microorganisms from Protaetia brevitarsis Larva Frass

Characterization of Microorganisms from Protaetia brevitarsis Larva Frass

Diversity and Functionality of Bacteria Associated with Different Tissues of Spider Heteropoda venatoria Revealed through Integration of High-Throughput Sequencing and Culturomics Approaches

Identification of Universally Applicable and Species-Specific Marker Peptides for Bacillus anthracis

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