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Journal of Bacteriology, September 2000, p. 5127-5138, Vol. 182, No. 18
0021-9193/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Plasmid-Located Pathogenicity Determinants of Serratia entomophila, the Causal Agent of Amber Disease of Grass Grub, Show Similarity to the Insecticidal Toxins of Photorhabdus luminescens

Mark R. H. Hurst,1,2,* Travis R. Glare,1 Trevor A. Jackson,1 and Clive W. Ronson2

Biocontrol and Biosecurity, Grasslands Division, AgResearch, Lincoln,1 and Department of Microbiology, University of Otago, Dunedin,2 New Zealand

Received 3 March 2000/Accepted 26 June 2000

Serratia entomophila and Serratia proteamaculans cause amber disease in the grass grub Costelytra zealandica (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae), an important pasture pest in New Zealand. Larval disease symptoms include cessation of feeding, clearance of the gut, amber coloration, and eventual death. A 115-kb plasmid, pADAP, identified in S. entomophila is required for disease causation and, when introduced into Escherichia coli, enables that organism to cause amber disease. A 23-kb fragment of pADAP that conferred disease-causing ability on E. coli and a pADAP-cured strain of S. entomophila was isolated. Using insertion mutagenesis, the pathogenicity determinants were mapped to a 17-kb region of the clone. Sequence analysis of the 17-kb region showed that the predicted products of three of the open reading frames (sepA, sepB, and sepC) showed significant sequence similarity to components of the insecticidal toxin produced by the bacterium Photorhabdus luminescens. Transposon insertions in sepA, sepB, or sepC completely abolished both gut clearance and cessation of feeding on the 23-kb clone; when recombined back into pADAP, they abolished gut clearance but not cessation of feeding. These results suggest that SepA, SepB, and SepC together are sufficient for amber disease causation by S. entomophila and that another locus also able to exert a cessation-of-feeding effect is encoded elsewhere on pADAP.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: AgResearch, P.O. Box 60, Lincoln, New Zealand. Phone: 64 3 983 3985. Fax: 64 3 983 3946. E-mail: HurstM{at}Agresearch.cri.nz.

Journal of Bacteriology, September 2000, p. 5127-5138, Vol. 182, No. 18
0021-9193/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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