Team:SZ-SHD/Poster

Poster: SZ-SHD

Insecticidal Missile: construction of a novel biopesticide using engineered Escherichia coli

Locust plague is a common natural disaster striking many regions, that would severely damage agriculture activities and result in commercial loss. The control of locusts via spraying of pesticides has been widely applied despite the high industrial cost and ecological problems could potentially be contributed. Conversely, the research in Bt toxins (a class of toxic proteins produced by Bacillus thuringiensis) and the chitinolytic enzymes suggested expectant toxicity against locusts. In our project, we constructed two strains of engineered bacteria to synthesis both proteins, whereas the insertion of a plasmid contains a UV inducible promoter, and a T4 lysis gene was used as a “suicide switch,” programmed for automatic lysis to release these toxins under ultraviolet radiation.