INVITATION PAPER (C.P. ALEXANDER FUND): HISTORY OF BACILLUS THURINGIENSIS BERLINER RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

1992 ◽  
Vol 124 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clayton C. Beegle ◽  
Takashi Yamamoto

AbstractThis review article starts with the discovery of Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner in Japan at the turn of the century and notes that the observations of the early Japanese workers clearly show that they were aware of the toxin-mediated nature of the activity of B. thuringiensis toward insect larvae. The early work in Europe with B. thuringiensis against Ostrinia nubilalis (Hubner) showed that the bacterium had promise as a microbial control agent. The commercial development of B. thuringiensis in France in the late 1930s, and in Eastern Europe and the United States in the 1950s, is traced.

2009 ◽  
Vol 75 (14) ◽  
pp. 4661-4667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Hernández-Soto ◽  
M. Cristina Del Rincón-Castro ◽  
Ana M. Espinoza ◽  
Jorge E. Ibarra

ABSTRACT Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis is the most widely used microbial control agent against mosquitoes and blackflies. Its insecticidal success is based on an arsenal of toxins, such as Cry4A, Cry4B, Cry11A, and Cyt1A, harbored in the parasporal crystal of the bacterium. A fifth toxin, Cry10Aa, is synthesized at very low levels; previous attempts to clone and express Cry10Aa were limited, and no parasporal body was formed. By using a new strategy, the whole Cry10A operon was cloned in the pSTAB vector, where both open reading frames ORF1 and ORF2 (and the gap between the two) were located, under the control of the cyt1A operon and the STAB-SD stabilizer sequence characteristic of this vector. Once the acrystalliferous mutant 4Q7 of B. thuringiensis subsp. israelensis was transformed with this construct, parasporal bodies were observed by phase-contrast microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Discrete, ca. 0.9-μm amorphous parasporal bodies were observed in the mature sporangia, which were readily purified by gradient centrifugation once autolysis had occurred. Pure parasporal bodies showed two major bands of ca. 68 and 56 kDa on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis. These bands were further characterized by N-terminal sequencing of tryptic fragments using matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry analysis, which identified both bands as the products of ORF1 and ORF2, respectively. Bioassays against fourth-instar larvae of Aedes aegypti of spore-crystal complex and pure crystals of Cry10Aa gave estimated 50% lethal concentrations of 2,061 ng/ml and 239 ng/ml, respectively. Additionally, synergism was clearly detected between Cry10A and Cyt1A, as the synergistic levels (potentiation rates) were estimated at 13.3 for the mixture of Cyt1A crystals and Cry10Aa spore-crystal complex and 12.6 for the combination of Cyt1A and Cry10Aa pure crystals.


1997 ◽  
Vol 129 (S171) ◽  
pp. 147-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Zelazny ◽  
M.S. Goettel ◽  
B. Keller

AbstractBacteria have been implicated in disease epizootics observed in field populations and laboratory-reared locusts and grasshoppers. Two species [Serratia marcescens Bizio and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Schroeter) Migula] consistently infect locusts when ingested with food and can spread in laboratory populations. However, research on developing these organisms for microbial control of locusts and grasshoppers begun in the 1950s has not been continued. In recent years strains of Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner have been studied for activity against locusts and grasshoppers. Results of additional trials by the authors are reported. Among 393 B. thuringiensis isolates and 93 preparations of other sporeforming bacteria fed to nymphs of Locusta migratoria (L.) and/or Schistocerca gregaria Forsk., none has shown any pathogenicity to the insects. The recent discovery of novel B. thuringiensis strains active against various diverse pests and the many properties of a sporeforming bacterium that satisfy the requirements for a microbial control agent, and the development of Serratia entomophila as a promising agent for control of grass grubs, provide incentive to continue the search for an orthopteran-active sporeforming bacterium and to re-investigate the potential of non-sporeforming bacterial pathogens as microbial control agents of grasshoppers and locusts.


2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Novak

James Henretta's “Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America” takes up one of the most interesting and important interpretive questions in the history of American political economy. What explains the dramatic transformation in liberal ideology and governance between 1877 and 1937 that carried the United States from laissez-faire constitutionalism to New Deal statism, from classical liberalism to democratic social-welfarism? That question has preoccupied legions of historians, political-economists, and legal scholars (as well as politicians and ideologues) at least since Hughes himself opened the October 1935 Term of the U.S. Supreme Court in a brand new building and amid a rising chorus of constitutional criticism. Henretta, wisely in my opinion, looks to law, particularly public law, for new insights into that great transformation. But, of course, the challenge in using legal history to answer such a question is the enormous increase in the actual policy output of courts, legislatures, and administrative agencies in this period. Trying to synthesize the complex changes in “law-in-action” in the fiercely contested forums of turn-of-the-century America sometimes seems the historical-sociological equivalent of attempting to empty the sea with a slotted spoon. Like any good social scientist, Henretta responds to the impossibility of surveying the whole by taking a sample. Through a case-study of the ideas, political reforms, and legal opinions of Charles Evans Hughes, particularly as governor of New York and associate and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Henretta offers us in microcosm the story of the revolution (or rather several revolutions) in modern American governance.


Author(s):  
Lawrence Harold Hardy

The computer has influenced the very fabric of modern society. As a stand-alone machine, it has proven itself a practical and highly efficient tool for education, commerce, science, and medicine. When attached to a network—the Internet for example—it becomes the nexus of opportunity, transforming our lives in ways that are both problematic and astonishing. Computer networks are the source for vast amounts of knowledge, which can predict the weather, identify organ donors and recipients, or analyze the complexity of the human genome (Shindler, 2002). The linking of ideas across an information highway satisfies a primordial hunger humans have to belong and to communicate. Early civilizations, to satisfy this desire, created information highways of carrier pigeons (Palmer, 2006). The history of computer networking begins in the 19th century with the invention of the telegraph, the telephone, and the radiotelegraph. The first communications information highway based on electricity was created with the deployment of the telegraph. The telegraph itself is no more than an electromagnet connected to a battery, connected to a switch, connected to wire (Derfler & Freed, 2002). The telegraph operates very straightforwardly. To send a message (electric current), the telegrapher rapidly opens and closes the telegraph switch. The receiving telegraph uses the electric current to create a magnetic field, which causes an observable mechanical event (Calvert, 2004). The first commercial telegraph was patented in Great Britain by Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke in 1837 (The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2007). The Cooke-Wheatstone Telegraph required six wires and five magnetic needles. Messages were created when combinations of the needles were deflected left or right to indicate letters (Derfler & Freed, 2002). Almost simultaneous to the Cooke-Wheatstone Telegraph was the Samuel F. B. Morse Telegraph in the United States in 1837 (Calvert, 2004). In comparison, the Morse Telegraph was decidedly different from its European counterpart. First, it was much simpler than the Cooke-Wheatstone Telegraph: to transmit messages, it used one wire instead of six. Second, it used a code and a sounder to send and receive messages instead of deflected needles (Derfler & Freed, 2002). The simplicity of the Morse Telegraph made it the worldwide standard. The next major change in telegraphy occurred because of the efforts of French inventor Emile Baudot. Baudot’s first innovation replaced the telegrapher’s key with a typewriter like keyboard. His second innovation replaced the dots and dashes of Morse code with a five-unit or five-bit code—similar to American standard code for information interchange (ASCII) or extended binary coded decimal interchange code (EBCDIC)—he developed. Unlike Morse code, which relied upon a series of dots and dashes, each letter in the Baudot code contained a combination of five electrical pulses. Eventually all major telegraph companies converted to Baudot code, which eliminated the need for a skilled Morse code telegrapher (Derfler & Freed, 2002). Finally, Baudot, in 1894, invented a distributor which allowed his printing telegraph to multiplex its signals; as many as eight machines could send simultaneous messages over one telegraph circuit (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia , 2006). The Baudot printing telegraph paved the way for the Teletype and Telex (Derfler & Freed, 2002). The second forerunner of modern computer networking was the telephone. It was a significant advancement over the telegraph for it personalized telecommunications, bringing the voices and emotions of the sender to the receiver. Unlike its predecessor the telegraph, telephone networks created virtual circuit to connect telephones to one another (Shindler, 2002). Legend credits Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone in 1876. He was not. Bell was the first to patent the telephone. Historians credit Italian- American scientist Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone. Meucci began working on his design for a talking telegraph in 1849 and filed a caveat for his design in 1871 but was unable to finance commercial development. In 2002, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing his accomplishment to telecommunications (Library of Congress, 2007).


1959 ◽  
Vol 91 (12) ◽  
pp. 798-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Mutchmor

In southwestern Ontario the European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hbn.), produces two flights annually. The first flight, beginning in June, consists of moths from larvae that have overwintered. The midsummer, or second, flight begins late in July or early in August, and its moths are the progeny of the first flight. Until about 20 years ago the borer produced only one annual flight and was thought to be univoltine. The change in the seasonal history of the borer in Ontario was described by Wressell (1953) and Miller (1956). The literature describing similar changes in parts of the United States has been reviewed by Lees (1955) and Everett et al. (1958). Wressell (1953) summarized light trap collection data of moth flights in the Chatham, Ontario, area for the years 1932 to 1951. The summary includes the percentage of the moths that were from the midsummer flight, and it is evident that the size of this flight varies greatly from year to year. Aside from its intrinsic interest, it would be of some economic value to know what governs the size of the midsummer flight. This is a report of studies undertaken to examine the case, and to relate the findings to the larger problem of why the borer now produces a second flight where formerly it produced only one.


1981 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. T. Briese ◽  
H. A. Mende

AbstractA laboratory bioassay technique was used to compare the susceptibility to a granulosis virus of 16 field populations of Phthorimaea operculella (Zell.) in Australia. A difference of 11·6× was found between the most and least susceptible population, while a laboratory strain was over 30 × as resistant as some field populations. It is suggested that this variability might reflect the past history of exposure of different populations to the virus, which appears to be endemic. The implications for the use of this virus as a microbial control agent are discussed.


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