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Efficacy of genetically modified Bt toxins against insects with different genetic mechanisms of resistance

Nature Biotechnology volume 29, pages 1128–1131 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Transgenic crops that produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins are grown widely for pest control1, but insect adaptation can reduce their efficacy2,3,4,5,6. The genetically modified Bt toxins Cry1AbMod and Cry1AcMod were designed to counter insect resistance to native Bt toxins Cry1Ab and Cry1Ac7. Previous results suggested that the modified toxins would be effective only if resistance was linked with mutations in genes encoding toxin-binding cadherin proteins7. Here we report evidence from five major crop pests refuting this hypothesis. Relative to native toxins, the potency of modified toxins was >350-fold higher against resistant strains of Plutella xylostella and Ostrinia nubilalis in which resistance was not linked with cadherin mutations. Conversely, the modified toxins provided little or no advantage against some resistant strains of three other pests with altered cadherin. Independent of the presence of cadherin mutations, the relative potency of the modified toxins was generally higher against the most resistant strains.

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Figure 1: Responses of susceptible and resistant strains of P. xylostella to native and genetically modified Bt toxins.
Figure 2: Resistance to native Bt toxins Cry1Ab and Cry1Ac (light bars) and genetically modified Bt toxins Cry1AbMod and Cry1AcMod (dark bars) in six species of insect pests.
Figure 3: Potency of modified Bt toxins relative to native Bt toxins.

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Acknowledgements

We thank G. Benzon, J. Engleman, J. Sánchez, T. Spencer and A. Yelich for technical assistance and J. Fabrick for providing an antibody. This work was supported by US Department of Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Grant 2008-35302-0390, US National Science Foundation Grant 0517107, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Pioneer Hi-Bred and the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant 30870343.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Entomology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Bruce E Tabashnik

  2. Department of Entomology, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

    Fangneng Huang, Mukti N Ghimire & B Rogers Leonard

  3. Department of Entomology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

    Blair D Siegfried & Murugesan Rangasamy

  4. Department of Entomology, College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China

    Yajun Yang & Yidong Wu

  5. Department of Biological Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina, USA

    Linda J Gahan

  6. Department of Entomology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany

    David G Heckel

  7. Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.,

    Alejandra Bravo & Mario Soberón

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Contributions

B.E.T., L.J.G., D.G.H., B.D.S., F.H., B.R.L., Y.W., M.S. and A.B. contributed to research design; M.S. and A.B. provided the toxins; L.J.G., M.R., M.N.G. and Y.Y. conducted bioassays; B.E.T., B.D.S., F.H. and Y.W. analyzed data. B.E.T. wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bruce E Tabashnik.

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Competing interests

Pioneer Hi-Bred International, which may be affected financially by publication of this article, provided partial funding for the research. Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto and Syngenta did not provide funding to support this work, but may be affected financially by publication of this paper and have supported other research by some of the authors. While conducting work for this paper, M.R. was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Nebraska. He is now employed by Dow AgroSciences. A.B., M.S. and B.E.T. are coauthors of a patent application on engineering modified Bt toxins to counter pest resistance, which is related to research described by M.S. et al. (Science 318,1640–1642, 2007).

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Tabashnik, B., Huang, F., Ghimire, M. et al. Efficacy of genetically modified Bt toxins against insects with different genetic mechanisms of resistance. Nat Biotechnol 29, 1128–1131 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.1988

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