De novo determination of mosquitocidal Cry11Aa and Cry11Ba structures from naturally-occurring nanocrystals.

ABSTRACT: Cry11Aa and Cry11Ba are the two most potent toxins produced by mosquitocidal Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis and jegathesan, respectively. The toxins naturally crystallize within the host; however, the crystals are too small for structure determination at synchrotron sources. Therefore, we applied serial femtosecond crystallography at X-ray free electron lasers to in vivo-grown nanocrystals of these toxins. The structure of Cry11Aa was determined de novo using the single-wavelength anomalous dispersion method, which in turn enabled the determination of the Cry11Ba structure by molecular replacement. The two structures reveal a new pattern for in vivo crystallization of Cry toxins, whereby each of their three domains packs with a symmetrically identical domain, and a cleavable cry

SUBMITTER: Tetreau G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9334358 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature