Despite advances in medical science and new drugs, mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria, filariasis, dengue and the viral encephalitides, remain the most important diseases of humans, with an estimated two billion people worldwide living in areas where these are endemic (World Health Organization, 1999a). Thus, there is an urgent need for new agents and strategies to control these diseases. Potential strategies include vaccines and transgenic mosquitoes refractive to the causative disease agents, but, in the near future, control efforts will rely on insecticides. Since World War II, disease control methods have relied heavily on broad-spectrum synthetic chemical insecticides to reduce vector populations. However, synthetic chemical insecticides are being phased out in many countries due to
insecticide resistance in mosquito populations. Furthermore, many governments restrict chemical insecticide use owing to concerns over their environmental effects on non-target beneficial insects and especially on vertebrates through contamination of food and water supplies. As a result, the World
Health Organization (1999b) is facilitating the replacement of these chemicals with bacterial insecticides through the development of standards for their registration and use. Vector control products based on bacteria are designed to control larvae. The most widely used are VectoBac® and Teknar®, which are based on Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis (Bti). In addition, VectoLex®, a product based on
Bacillus sphaericus (Bs), has come to market recently for the control of mosquito vectors of filariasis and viral diseases. These products have achieved moderate commercial success in developed countries, but their high cost deters use in many developing countries. Moreover, concerns have been raised about their long-term utility due to resistance, which has already been reported to B. sphaericus in field populations of Culex mosquitoes in several different countries. The insecticidal properties of these bacteria are due
primarily to insecticidal proteins produced during sporulation. In Bti, the key proteins are Cyt1A, Cry11A, Cry4A and Cry4B, whereas Bs produces a single binary toxin commonly referred to as Bin. Of particular interest among these proteins is Cyt1A, which synergizes and delays resistance to mosquitocidal Cry
proteins and can be used to overcome resistance to Bs, as well as extend its spectrum of activity to, for example, the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti (Fig. 1). In addition to Bti and Bs, mosquitocidal proteins have been identified in other species, such as B. thuringiensis subsp. jegathesan; these also
offer promise for use in new types of larvicide. Aside from this variety of mosquitocidal proteins, several
genetic elements have been identified that, when used in combination with strong Bt promoters, can be used to improve efficacy by increasing endotoxin synthesis significantly. The most important of these are the STAB/SD sequence, a ninenucleotide polypurine sequence that improves transcript stability and thus endotoxin synthesis, and a 20-kDa protein that occurs naturally in the Cry11A operon. This protein
enhances net synthesis of Cry11A and other proteins and apparently acts as a molecular chaperone.
The biochemical and toxicological differences between mosquitocidal Bt and Bs toxins prompted several attempts during the late 1980s and 1990s to construct recombinant bacteria that combined the best properties of these species. However, none of the resultant recombinants had efficacy sufficiently improved over wild-type strains to warrant commercial development. The prospects for developing
recombinant bacteria with high efficacy suitable for commercial development have improved recently due to the availability of genetic elements for improving endotoxin synthesis, a greater range of mosquitocidal proteins and the development of a better understanding of the toxicological properties of Cyt1A. In this overview, we first describe the properties of Bti and Bs and summarize previous research on improving bacteria for mosquito control. We then go on to show how new knowledge and technologies have been used to create recombinant bacteria that have much better potential for use in operational mosquito control programs owing to their very high efficacy and built-in resistant management properties based on Cyt1A. The literature on Bt, Bti and Bs is extensive and thus, in this overview, we cite review papers to guide
interested readers to the original literature.