Evaluation of Antifungal, Antibacterial and Anti-insecticidal Activities of Three Bacillus Strains Produced by Protoplast Fusion from Bacillus thuringensis

In this work, the protoplast fusion technique was evaluated for its efficiency in transferring various biological products from parental strains to fusion produced ones.Bacillus thuringiensis was the principal parent in three different protoplast fusion processes.Three new bacterial strains were produced previously from protoplast fusion; B18 [Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) x Bacillus subtilis 168 (Bs1)], C80 [Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) x Bacillus lichiniformis (Bl)] and D27 [Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) x Bacillus subtilis subsp.Spizizinii (Bs2)].In this work, we aim to detect the non-ribosomal peptides (NRPS) encoding genes as important secondary metabolites involved in the biocontrol of several pathogenic diseases in plants in addition to protease, and chitinase known for their broad range of industrial applications.It was observed from the results that both fusions B18 and D27 revealed the highest number of products (two NRPs; surfactin and fengycin, protease and chitinase and two NRPs; surfactin and kurstakin, protease and chitinase) followed by C80 (two NRPs; lichenysin and kurstakin and protease), respectively.The produced strains showed moderate antagonism activity against Aspergillus aflatoxinformans and against Erwinia carotovora.Anti-insecticidal activity for the three Bacillus produced strains was evaluated against Agrotis ipsilon, whereas B18, D27 and B18 revealed a considerable toxic effect at higher tested concentrations (10%, 5%, and 2.5%), causing 60%, 30% and 23% larvae mortality respectively.Also, D27 showed 56.67%, 26.67% and 20% larval mortality with the same concentrations, while C80 showed lower mortality at higher concentration (10%, 5%, and 2.5%), causing 40%, 20% and 16.67% larvae mortality.