Instrumental and Food Analysis Laboratory, School of Biosciences and Technology VIT University, Vellore-632 014, Tamil Nadu, India
*Corresponding Author E-mail: vsuneetha@vit.ac.in
Online published on 10 February, 2015.
Recently various biopesticides have been produced by culturing keratinolytic bacteria to synthesize mosquitocidal toxins to minimize or decrease the risk of mosquito-borne diseases by controlling the mosquito population. Certain species of bacilli (mainly Bacillus spharicus and Bacillus thuringiensis) and Clostridium produce different form of toxins having different molecular weight those help to kill mosquito larvae at the concentrations in the picomolar range. Although, there are so many different genes those encode mosquitocidal toxins, which vary in their properties like potency, mode of action and species specificity. Mosquitocidal bacilli strains are safe for animals and the environment and unlike chemical insecticide they do not affect the non-target insects. These Mosquitocidal bacteria are very effective against Anopheles, Aedes and Culex mosquitoes, but generally they rapidly settle down from larval feeding zone and their narrow host range and UV-light sensitivity properties have hampered their development. These limitations could be overcome by the new genetic engineering approaches that allow stable expression of broad host range combinations of toxins in UV resistant and buoyant recombinant bacteria.
Mosquito-born diseases, keratinolytic mosquitocidal bacteria, mosquitocidal toxins, larvicidal and pupicidal bacteria, genetically engineered bacteria
