Understanding the toxicity of Bacillus pumilus 15.1 toward the Mediterranean fruit fly(Ceratitis capitata)

Abstract: Bacillus pumilus 15.1 has been recently reported as a strain active against larvae of theMediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Molina et al., 2010). The 15.1 strain only reveals toxicityagainst this insect when cultures are incubated at low temperature for at least 96 h before thebioassay takes place, an interesting phenomenon worth to study and characterise it in detail. In thisstudy we report as well that the virulence factor is of a proteinous nature. We characterised theprotein expression profile of strain 15.1 along with its growth curve and found that the strainoverproduces insoluble proteins that are secreted during sporulation.