Structure of Cry1Aa1 crystal protein fromB. thuringiensis var.
kurstaki HD-1 has been solved by X-ray crystallography. The
toxin is made of three distinct domains. The N-terminal
domain is a bundle of eight alpha-helices. It has a central,
relatively hydrophobic helix surrounded by amphipathic he-lices. Domain II comprises of three antiparallel b sheets,
which are folded into loops and domain III is made of ab
sandwich of two antiparallelbstrands. Comparison with the
structure of Cry3A shows that although the fold of these two
proteins is similar, there are significant structural differences
within domain II. This finding supports the conclusions from
genetic studies that domain II is involved in recognition and
binding to cell surface receptors. The distribution of the
electrostatic potential on the surface of the molecule is non-uniform and identifies one side of the alpha-helical domain
as negatively charged. The predominance of arginine residues
as basic residues ensures that the observed positive charge
distribution is also maintained in the highly alkaline envi-ronment found in the lepidopteran midgut.
8
The studies on
Cry1Ac toxin revealed that residue 544 of domain III plays an
important role in maintaining structural stability. Substitu-tion of a polar group at this position is unfavorable to its
stability.
9
3. Engineered and synthetic Cry1 toxins
Many Cry1 mutant toxins were developed which resulted in
low or no toxicity on tested insects by protein engineering
techniques such as (a) single or multiple amino acid changes
in variable and conserved regions through site directed
mutagenesis10,11
(b) restriction fragment exchange between
closely relatedcrytoxin genes or with other bacterial toxin
genes and
12
(c) exchange of domains between toxin genes
through PCR mediated cloning or in vivo recombination in
recAþ(recombinant proficient) Eschericha coliStrains.
13
This
has helped to define better the functions of these crystal
protein helices in membrane binding, membrane insertion
and toxicity. Various mutations in domain I, II and III of the
crystal toxins and their effect on the toxicities toward the
target insects and trypsin stabilities have been presented in
Table 2.
A wild-typecrygene has a low GþC content, many po-tential polyadenylation sites (18), and numerous ATTTA se-quences. It is expressed poorly in plants as a full length or as a
truncated gene. A synthetic type cry gene was designed by
mutagenesis with plant preferred codons, low AþT per-centage and increased GþC concentration. This synthetic
gene got expressed 500 times more than wild type in Trans-genic tobacco and showed complete protection toward beetla.