MADISON - By isolating and characterizing the biochemical properties of a new-found natural insecticide, scientists have taken an important step toward augmenting the sparse armamentarium of biological pest control.
Writing today (Friday, June 26) in the journal Science, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison describe the properties of a family of insecticidal toxins produced by Photorhabdus luminescens, a bacterium that, in nature, infects and kills insects with the help of a tiny worm or nematode.
The toxins produced by Photorhabdus are active against a wide range of insects and are at least as potent as the insect-killing poisons produced by Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt, the reigning king of natural insecticides, according to Richard ffrench-Constant, a UW-Madison professor of toxicology in the department of entomology and the principal author of the new study.
"These new toxins are highly efficient killers of insects and they hold for the future the same promise first revealed in Bt more than 30 years ago," said ffrench-Constant.
Widely used for decades in the home, in forests and on farms, Bt is also a bacterium and is considered to be a safe, effective and environmentally benign weapon in the war on insect pests. Moreover, in the last few years the genes that govern the production of the Bt toxin have been moved from the bacterium into crop plants, which this year account for 20 percent of the U.S. cotton crop and nearly 10 million acres of transgenic corn, mostly in the Midwest.
As a form of biological pest control, Bt is the only bacterium from which widespread commercial insecticidal applications have been possible, giving it, in effect, a microbial monopoly on insect control worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But the development of new, naturally occurring insecticides has taken on new urgency in recent years as resistance to Bt has been reported in some populations of insect pests.
"Potential resistance
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Contact: Richard ffrench-Constant
ffrench@vms2.macc.wisc.edu
608-263-7924
University of Wisconsin-Madison
25-Jun-1998