MULTILOCUS ENZYME ELECTROPHORESIS STUDY OF BACILLUS-SPHAERICUS

Multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE) has been used in the study of some Bacillus species. In this work we applied MLEE and numerical ana lysis in the study of the Bacillus sphaericus group. B. sphaericus can be distinguished from other entomopathogenic Bacillus by a unique all ele (NP-4). Within the species, all insect pathogens were recovered in the same phenetic cluster and all of these strains have the same band position (electrophoresis migration) on the agarose gel (ADH-2). The entomopathogenic group of B. sphaericus seems to be a clonal populatio n, having two widespread frequent genotypes (zymovar 59 and zymovar 11 9).