Identification and characterization of Bacillus thuringiensis strains by the genomic fingerprinting technique with biotinylated phage M13 DNA

Genomic DNA of the entomopathogenic bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis was an alyzed by the genomic fingerprinting technique. The biotin-labeled single-s tranded DNA of the phage M13 was used as a marker of hypervariable sequence s. A procedure for analyzing the differentiation among various Bacillus thu ringiensis strains was developed. Characteristic patterns of fingerprints w ere obtained for several strains, the main representatives of subspecies ch at are most frequently used in the manufacture of bacterial insecticides, s uch as subsp. thuringiensis, subsp. kurstaki, and subsp. galleriae. Because no essential differences were revealed in band patterns upon comparing fin gerprints of crystal-producing bacterial strains with those of acrystallic mutants, it was assumed that the loss of crystal-producing ability in the i nsect pathogen Bacillus thuringiensis is not connected with significant rea rrangement of its genome.