Did you know that bacteria can be used to kill bugs? 🐛🦟🪲 Bacteria within the Bacillus cereus group (e.g., B. thuringiensis) are important sources of biopesticides. However, resistance to biopesticides is increasing among insects, meaning that we need new ways to kill bugs using bacteria! 🦠 Environments with large insect populations have previously proven to be rich sources of bug-killing B. cereus group bacteria. 🦟 However, bacteria from these environments are rarely characterized using genomic sequencing, meaning that we don’t know very much about them! 🧬

In our latest study with Ben Raymond’s group at the University of Exeter, we use whole-genome sequencing to characterize a set of novel environmental B. cereus group isolates from regions of the United Kingdom with a high prevalence of insects, with the goal of identifying genomic determinants of novel insecticidal biomolecules (🚨 spoiler alert: we find some promising leads)! 🐛

Overall, our study provides rare insights into environmental B. cereus group isolates from insect-rich environments and indicates that targeted sampling efforts in environments with dense populations of insects of interest may yield novel insecticidal bacterial strains! 🪲 You can check out the preprint for yourself here! ⭐