Disabled insecticidal proteins: A novel tool to understand differences in insect receptor utilization

The development of insect resistance to pesticides via natural selection is an acknowledged agricultural issue. Likewise, resistance development in target insect populations is a significant challenge to the durability of crop traits conferring insect protection and has driven the need for novel insecticidal proteins (IPs) with alternative mechanism of action (MOA) mediated by different insect receptors. The combination or “stacking” of transgenes encoding different insecticidal proteins in a single crop plant can greatly delay the development of insect resistance, but requires sufficient knowledge of MOA to identify proteins with different receptor preferences. Accordingly, a rapid technique for differentiating the receptor binding preferences of insecticidal proteins is a critical need. This article introduces the Disabled Insecticidal Protein (DIP) method as applied to the well-known family of three-domain insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis and related bacteria. These DIP's contain amino acid substitutions in domain 1 that render the proteins non-toxic but still capable of competing with active proteins in insect feeding assays, resulting in a suppression of the expected insecticidal activity. A set of insecticidal proteins with known differences in receptor binding (Cry1Ab3, Cry1Ac.107, Cry2Ab2, Cry1Ca, Cry1A.105, and Cry1A.1088) has been studied using the DIP method, yielding results that are consistent with previous MOA studies. When a native IP and an excess of DIP are co-administered to insects in a feeding assay, the outcome depends on the overlap between their MOAs: if receptors are shared, then the DIP saturates the receptors to which the native protein would ordinarily bind, and acts as an antidote whereas, if there is no shared receptor, the toxicity of the native insecticidal protein is not inhibited. These results suggest that the DIP methodology, employing standard insect feeding assays, is a robust and effective method for rapid MOA differentiation among insecticidal proteins. [Display omitted] •Specific mutations were introduced in Cry1Ab to eliminate its pore-forming activity.•These mutations did not impact the wild-type receptor binding function.•This variant exhibited mass-action based competition in vivo against native Cry1Ab.•Disabled probes were also developed for Cry1Ca and Cry2Ab proteins.•These probes were used to uncover receptor preferences of insecticidal Cry proteins.