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The insect pathogenic fungus Metarhizium anisopliae is an important insect biological control agent commercialized for use worldwide. Fungal infection is percutaneous, and rapid germination and growth has been linked to virulence. Using a simple in vitro growth screen to isolate mutants with increased virulence, M. anisopliae SM04 conidia were exposed to UV radiation for 20, 40, and 60 min, and mutants were subsequently screened for more rapid growth on standard potato dextrose agar. From a screen of >6,000 colonies, mutants were selected based on larger colony diameters as compared to the wild-type parent. Insect bioassays using the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella, revealed one mutant, designated as MaUV-40.1 as displaying both more rapid growth and increased virulence. The mean lethal time to kill (LT using 10 conidia/ml) was 57.6 and 115.4 h for the MaUV-40.1 mutant and wild-type strains, respectively. Total conidial production, UV and thermal tolerances of the MaUV-40.1 strain were increased, but a reduced secretome was seen for the mutant compared to wild type. Analyses of culture supernatants indicated significant shifts in secondary metabolite production in the mutant. The insecticidal activity of EthOAc extracts derived from MaUV-40.1 mutant cell-free culture supernatants were ~20 times more potent that wild-type extracts. These data indicate that mutagenesis coupled to a growth screen can be a simple approach to isolate strains with greater stress resistance and virulence and that cell-free extracts may hold promise as an alternative to the living organism for insect control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thermophilic enzymes are in high demand for various applications due to their prolonged lifetimes and high reaction rates at elevated temperatures. In this work, an open reading frame TM0295, which encodes a putative transaldolase (TAL) from a hyper-thermophilic microorganism, Thermotoga maritima, was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. The enzyme activity of transaldolase at high temperatures (e.g., at 80 °C) was reported here for the first time. The recombinant T. maritima transaldolase was extremely thermostable, with a half-life time of 198 and 13.0 h at 60 °C and 80 °C, respectively. The estimated total turn-over number was 1.5 × 10 mol of product per mol of enzyme at 80 °C. This enzyme also exhibited high activities within a broad pH range of 6.0-9.0. This ultra-thermostable TAL with high activity shows great potential for use in such applications as the production of enzymatic biofuels production and the synthesis of high-value carbohydrates by cell-free synthetic pathway biotransformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]