Peng Donghai

Huazhong Agricultural University | HZAU · College of Life Science and Technology

The Gram-positive soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis has been developed as the leading microbial insecticide for years. The pathogenesis of B. thuringiensis requires common extracellular factors that depend on the PlcR regulon, which regulates a large number of virulence factors, however the precise role of many of these proteins is not known. I...

Pathogen avoidance behavior protects animal hosts against microbial pathogens. Pathogens have evolved specific strategies during coevolution in response to such host defenses. However, these strategies for combatting host avoidance behavioral defenses remain poorly understood. Here, we used Caenorhabditis elegans and its bacterial pathogen Bacillus...

CRISPR-Cas systems are considered as barriers to horizontal gene transfer (HGT). However, the influence of such systems on HGT within species is unclear. Also, little is known about the impact of CRISPR-Cas systems on bacterial evolution at the population level. Here, using Bacillus cereus sensu lato as model, we investigate the interplay between C...

Plant-parasitic nematodes cause huge agricultural economic losses. Two major families of Bacillus thuringiensis crystal proteins, Cry5 and Cry6, show nematicidal activity. Previous work showed that binding to midgut receptors is a limiting step in Cry toxin mode of action. In the case of Cry5Ba, certain Caenorhabditis elegans glycolipids were ident...

We isolated, identified, and characterised Bfsp1, a novel virulent phage of Cytobacillus firmus. Morphologically, Bfsp1 is similar to phi29-like phages. The linear, double-stranded DNA genome of Bfsp1 is 22,320 bp in length, has a GC content of 36.06%, and has 10-bp inverted terminal repeats. The genome contains 33 open reading frames, and function...

Nematodes feed on nontoxic bacteria as a food resource and avoid toxic bacteria; they distinguish them through their volatile metabolites. However, the mechanism of how nematodes recognize bacteria by volatile metabolites is not fully understood.

Background Due to the detrimental effects of chemical preservatives, there has been an increasing demand for safer, healthier and natural bio-preservatives. Bacteriocins have attracted increasing interest because of their potential as natural bio-preservatives. Results We screened a large number of Bacillus thuringiensis strains and isolated one s...

Ralstonia solanacearum is a soil-borne phytopathogen, and it can cause bacterial wilt disease in a variety of key crops around the world, thus resulting in enormous financial losses. However, there is a lack of effective, green, and safe prevention and control measures against increasingly devastating bacterial wilt disease. Bacteriophages (phages)...

Pathogen recognition and the triggering of host innate immune system are critical to understanding pathogen-host interaction. Cellular surveillance systems have been identified as an important strategy for the identification of microbial infection. In the present study, using Bacillus thuringiensis-Caenorhabditis elegans as a model, we found an app...

Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (X. oryzae) is a bacterial pathovar of rice diseases all over the world. Owing to emerging antibacterial resistance, phage therapies have gained significant attention to treat various bacterial infections. Nevertheless, comprehensive research is needed for their use as a safe biocontrol agent. In this study, isolation...

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) has been used as the most successful microbial pesticide for decades. Its toxin genes are used for the development of GM crops against pests. We previously developed a web-based insecticidal gene mining tool BtToxin_scanner. It has been frequently used by many researchers worldwide. However, it can only handle the genome...

Pathogen recognition and triggering pattern of host innate immune system is critical to understanding pathogen-host interaction. Cellular surveillance systems have been reported as an important strategy for the identification of microbial infection. In the present study, using Bacillus thuringiensis - Caenorhabditis elegans as a model, we found a n...

Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae is a bacterial pathogen that gives rise to diseases in rice all over the world. A bacteriophage infecting this bacterium was isolated from rice fields in China. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of this phage, which has a linear dsDNA genome of 309,023 bp and a G + C content of 42.43%. It contains 401 open r...

More and more frequently, genomics and comparative genomics have been used as routine methods for general microbiological research. However, using several tools or even writing some scripts are required for completing a simple analysis, which is complicated for most biological researchers. To simplify the operation process, particularly for the con...

contributed equally to this work. Author order was determined both alphabetically and in order of increasing seniority. ABSTRACT A jumbo bacteriophage, Xoo-sp14, infecting Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae was isolated from rice fields in China. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of this phage, revealing that it had a linear double-stranded D...

Ditylenchus destructor is a migratory plant-parasitic nematode that causes huge damage to global root and tuber production annually. The main plant hosts of D. destructor contain plenty of starch, which makes the parasitic environment of D. destructor to be different from those of most other plant-parasitic nematodes. It is speculated that D. destr...

Circular bacteriocins are promising biopreservatives, and it is important to identify more novel circular bacteriocins to enhance the current arsenal of antimicrobials. In this study, we used an in silico approach to identify a large number of novel circular bacteriocins and classified these bacteriocins into 28 groups rather than the 2 groups that...

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) which is a spore-forming gram-positive bacterium, has been used as the most successful microbial pesticide for decades. Its toxin genes (cry) have been successfully used for the development of GM crops against pests. We have previously developed a web-based insecticidal gene mining tool BtToxin_scanner, which has been pr...

Genomics and comparative genomics have been increasingly used as routine methods for general microbiological researches. However, it is usually necessary to call several tools or even write some scripts to complete some simple analysis, which is complicated for most biological researchers. To simplify the operation process, especially for the conve...

Genomics and comparative genomics have been increasingly used as routine methods for general microbiological researches. However, it is usually necessary to call several tools or even write some scripts to complete some simple analysis, which is complicated for most biological researchers. To simplify the operation process, especially for the conve...

Genomics and comparative genomics have been increasingly used as routine methods for general microbiological researches. However, it is usually necessary to call several tools or even write some scripts to complete some simple analysis, which is complicated for most biological researchers. To simplify the operation process, especially for the conve...

More and more frequently, genomics and comparative genomics have been used as routine methods for general microbiological research. However, using several tools or even writing some scripts are required for completing a simple analysis, which is complicated for most biological researchers. To simplify the operation process, particularly for the con...

Microbes can enter into healthy plants as endophytes and confer beneficial functions. The entry of commensal microbes into plants involves penetrating plant defense. Most mechanisms about overcoming plant defense are focused on adapted pathogens, while the mechanism involved in beneficial endophyte evades plant defense to achieve harmonious commens...

A bacteriophage can replicate and release virions from a host cell in the lytic cycle or switch to a lysogenic process in which the phage integrates itself into the host genome as a prophage. In Bacillus cells, some types of phages employ the arbitrium communication system, which contains an arbitrium hexapeptide, the cellular receptor AimR and the...

Bacillus thuringiensis formulation losing its activity under field conditions due to UV radiation and photoprotection of B. thuringiensis based on melanin has attracted the attention of researchers for many years. Here, a single amino acid substitution (G272E) in homogentisate 1,2-dioxygenase was found to be responsible for pigment overproduction i...

Bacterial leaf blight (BLB) caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) is a serious bacterial disease in rice-growing regions worldwide. Phage therapy has been proposed as a potential measure to treat bacterial infections. In this study, a novel phage, Xoo-sp2, which infects Xoo was isolated from soil. The characteristics of Xoo-sp2, including t...

Pathogenic bacteria use different strategies to infect their hosts including the simultaneous production of pore forming toxins and several virulence factors that help to synergize their pathogenic effects. However, how the pathogenic bacteria are able to complete their life cycle and break out the host intestinal barrier is poorly understood. The...

Despite the successful application of crystal proteins (Cry) from Bacillus thuringiensis as biological control agents against insects, there is an increasing demand to identify new Cry toxins having higher toxicity and broad-spectrum activity against insects and plant-parasitic nematodes. To find novel Cry toxins, we screened 100 whole-genome seque...

Parasitic nematodes of animals and plants cause worldwide devastating impacts on people’s lives and agricultural crops. The crystal protein Cry5B produced by Bacillus thuringiensis has efficient and specific activity against a wide range of nematodes. However, the action mode of this toxin has not yet been thoroughly determined. Here, a nematode-sp...

Understanding the genetic basis of host shifts is a key genomic question for pathogen and parasite biology. The Bacillus cereus group, which encompasses Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus anthracis, contains pathogens that can infect insects, nematodes, and vertebrates. Since the target range of the essential virulence factors (Cry toxins) and man...

Cry proteins of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have been successfully used as biopesticides and in transgenic crops throughout the world. However, resources against the most serious agricultural pathogens, plant root-knot nematodes, are limited. The genomes of several highly nematicidal virulent Bt strains from our laboratory have been sequenced, faci...

Fig. 2. Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COG) distribution of the core genes, accessory genes and unique genes in Bacillus velezensis strains. BPGA pipeline was used to determine the COG distribution. A total of 12 B. velezensis strains were selected, including the strain LS69, CBMB205, SQR9, FZB42, YJ11-1-4, CAU B946, JJ-D34, JS25R, NAU-B3, UCMB503...

Bacillus velezensis LS69 was found to exhibit antagonistic activity against a diverse spectrum of pathogenic bacteria. It has one circular chromosome of 3,917,761 bp with 3,643 open reading frames. Genome analysis identified ten gene clusters involved in nonribosomal synthesis of polyketides (macrolactin, bacillaene and difficidin), lipopeptides (s...

Clay minerals and metal oxides, as important parts of the soil matrix, play crucial roles in the development of microbial communities. However, the mechanism underlying such a process, particularly on the formation of soil biofilm, remains poorly understood. Here, we investigated the effects of montmorillonite, kaolinite, and goethite on the biofil...

Transposon mutagenesis and subsequent phenotype-driven screening have been extensively used to annotate gene function and uncover the mechanisms of biological phenomena. During this process, the resulting phenotypic differences are specifically attributable to the disrupted genes. In this study, the complementation of the mini-Tn10 transposon-disru...

Bacillus thuringiensis serovar alesti was used to control caterpillars from 1970s. Here we reported the complete genome of BGSC 4C1, the type strain of this serovar. It has a circular chromosome and six plasmids. The largest plasmid pBMB267 contains five insecticidal crystal protein genes (two copies of cry1Ae, cry1Gb, cry2Ab, and a novel cry1M-typ...

Root-knot nematodes (RKNs) which can infect almost all crops lead to huge economic losses in agriculture around the world. Unavailability of effective and environmentally friendly control of RKNs provides an opportunity to nematicidal bacteria. Fictibacillus phosphorivorans G25-29 is a gram-positive and spore-forming bacterium with nematicidal capa...

In the soil environment, Bacilli can affect nematode development, fecundity and survival. However, although many Bacillus species can kill nematodes, the virulence mechanisms Bacilli utilize remain unknown. In this study, we collected 120 strains comprising 30 species across the Bacillaceae and Paenibacillaceae families of the Bacillales order and...

Plant-parasitic nematodes were found in 4 of the 12 clades of phylum Nematoda. These nematodes in different clades may have originated independently from their free-living fungivorous ancestors. However, the exact evolutionary process of these parasites is unclear. Here, we sequenced the genome sequence of a migratory plant nematode, Ditylenchus de...

Due to the rapidly increasing prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacterial strains, the need for new antimicrobial drugs to treat infections has become urgent. Bacteriocins, which are antimicrobial peptides of bacterial origin, are considered potential alternatives to conventional antibiotics and have attracted widespread attention in recent years....

Banana (Musa spp.) is among the most important food crops in the world and is a major food staple in the tropics (Hölscher et al. 2014). Banana is also one of the major fruits produced in China, and has been widely cultivated on Hainan Island of China (Zhong et al. 2014). Helicotylenchus spp. are globally distributed, and several species parasitize...

Background Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus cereus are two important species in B. cereus group. The intensive study of these strains at the molecular level and construction of genetically modified bacteria requires the development of efficient genetic tools. To insert genes into or delete genes from bacterial chromosomes, marker-less manipulati...

Plant-parasitic nematodes (PPNs) cause serious harm to agricultural production. Bacillus firmus shows excellent control of PPNs and has been produced as a commercial nematicide. However, its nematicidal factors and mechanisms are still unknown. In this study, we showed that B. firmus strain DS-1 has high toxicity against Meloidogyne incognita and s...

Cell death plays an important role in host-pathogen interactions. Crystal proteins (toxins) are essential components of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) biological pesticides because of their specific toxicity against insects and nematodes. However, the mode of action by which crystal toxins to induce cell death is not completely understood. Here we sho...

Bacillus thuringiensis strain CTC, which is identified as serotype H2, ssp. Finitimus, is high production of S-layer protein. Due to the property of forming isoporous lattices on the whole cell surface, S-layer protein has been widely used in (nano)biotechnology, biomimetics, biomedicine, especially been employed for displaying many important activ...

Bacillus thuringiensis has been globally used as a microbial pesticide for over 70 years. However, information regarding its various adaptions and virulence factors and their roles in the entomopathogenic process remains limited. In this work, we present the complete genomes of two industrially patented Bacillus thuringiensis strains (HD-1 and YBT-...

Lantibiotics are antimicrobial peptides with potential applications as the next generation of antimicrobials in the food industry and/or the pharmaceutical industry. Nisin has successfully been used as a food preservative for over 40 years, but its major drawback is its limited stability under neutral and alkaline pH conditions. To identify alterna...

The entomopathogen Bacillus thuringiensis is equipped with multiple virulent factors. The genome sequence of B. thuringiensis YBT1520 revealed the presence of a two domains protein named Nel which is composed of a NPP1-like domain found in phytopathogens and a ricin B-like lectin domain. The merge of two distantly related domains is relatively rare...

Bacillus thuringiensis, which is well known as an entomopathogen, has been accepted by the public as a safe bioinsecticide. The natural ecology of this bacterium has never been particularly clear, with views ranging from it being an obligate pathogen to an opportunist pathogen that can otherwise exist as a soil saprophyte or a plant endophyte. This...

The insecticidal crystal protein (Cry) genes of Bacillus thuringiensis are a key gene resource for generating transgenic crops with pest resistance. However, many cry genes cannot be expressed or form crystals in mother cells. Here, we report a novel Cry protein gene, cry65Aa1, which exists in an operon that contains a downstream gene encoding a hy...

Background Prokaryotic plasmids have played significant roles in the evolution of bacterial genomes and have a great impact on the metabolic functions of the host cell. Many bacterial strains contain multiple plasmids, but the relationships between bacterial plasmids and chromosomes are unclear. We focused on plasmids from the Bacillus cereus group...

Lantibiotics are ribosomally synthesized peptides that contain multiple post-translational modifications. Research activities in lantibiotics have increased recently, mainly due to their broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity, especially against some clinical Gram-positive pathogens. Many reports about various bacteriocins in the Bacillus cereus gro...