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Adaptive Evolution of cry Genes in Bacillus thuringiensis: Implications for Their Specificity Determination

The cry gene family, produced during the late exponential phase of growth in Bacillus thuringiensis, is a large, still-growing family of homologous genes, in which each gene encodes a protein with strong specific activity against only one or a few insect species. Extensive studies are mostly focusin...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wu, Jin-Yu, Zhao, Fang-Qing, Bai, Jie, Deng, Gang, Qin, Song, Bao, Qi-Yu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5054088/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17893075
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1672-0229(07)60020-5
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author Wu, Jin-Yu
Zhao, Fang-Qing
Bai, Jie
Deng, Gang
Qin, Song
Bao, Qi-Yu
author_facet Wu, Jin-Yu
Zhao, Fang-Qing
Bai, Jie
Deng, Gang
Qin, Song
Bao, Qi-Yu
author_sort Wu, Jin-Yu
collection PubMed
description The cry gene family, produced during the late exponential phase of growth in Bacillus thuringiensis, is a large, still-growing family of homologous genes, in which each gene encodes a protein with strong specific activity against only one or a few insect species. Extensive studies are mostly focusing on the structural and functional relationships of Cry proteins, and have revealed several residues or domains that are important for the target recognition and receptor attachment. In this study, we have employed a maximum likelihood method to detect evidence of adaptive evolution in Cry proteins, and have identified 24 positively selected residues, which are all located in Domain II or III. Combined with known data from mutagenesis studies, the majority of these residues, at the molecular level, contribute much to the insect specificity determination. We postulate that the potential pressures driving the diversification of Cry proteins may be in an attempt to adapt for the “arm race” between δ-endotoxins and the targeted insects, or to enlarge their target spectra, hence result in the functional divergence. The sites identified to be under positive selection would provide targets for further structural and functional analyses on Cry proteins.
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spelling pubmed-50540882016-10-14 Adaptive Evolution of cry Genes in Bacillus thuringiensis: Implications for Their Specificity Determination Wu, Jin-Yu Zhao, Fang-Qing Bai, Jie Deng, Gang Qin, Song Bao, Qi-Yu Genomics Proteomics Bioinformatics Article The cry gene family, produced during the late exponential phase of growth in Bacillus thuringiensis, is a large, still-growing family of homologous genes, in which each gene encodes a protein with strong specific activity against only one or a few insect species. Extensive studies are mostly focusing on the structural and functional relationships of Cry proteins, and have revealed several residues or domains that are important for the target recognition and receptor attachment. In this study, we have employed a maximum likelihood method to detect evidence of adaptive evolution in Cry proteins, and have identified 24 positively selected residues, which are all located in Domain II or III. Combined with known data from mutagenesis studies, the majority of these residues, at the molecular level, contribute much to the insect specificity determination. We postulate that the potential pressures driving the diversification of Cry proteins may be in an attempt to adapt for the “arm race” between δ-endotoxins and the targeted insects, or to enlarge their target spectra, hence result in the functional divergence. The sites identified to be under positive selection would provide targets for further structural and functional analyses on Cry proteins. Elsevier 2007 2007-09-22 /pmc/articles/PMC5054088/ /pubmed/17893075 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1672-0229(07)60020-5 Text en © 2007 Beijing Institute of Genomics http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wu, Jin-Yu
Zhao, Fang-Qing
Bai, Jie
Deng, Gang
Qin, Song
Bao, Qi-Yu
Adaptive Evolution of cry Genes in Bacillus thuringiensis: Implications for Their Specificity Determination
title Adaptive Evolution of cry Genes in Bacillus thuringiensis: Implications for Their Specificity Determination
title_full Adaptive Evolution of cry Genes in Bacillus thuringiensis: Implications for Their Specificity Determination
title_fullStr Adaptive Evolution of cry Genes in Bacillus thuringiensis: Implications for Their Specificity Determination
title_full_unstemmed Adaptive Evolution of cry Genes in Bacillus thuringiensis: Implications for Their Specificity Determination
title_short Adaptive Evolution of cry Genes in Bacillus thuringiensis: Implications for Their Specificity Determination
title_sort adaptive evolution of cry genes in bacillus thuringiensis: implications for their specificity determination
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5054088/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17893075
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1672-0229(07)60020-5
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