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A bacterial strain named CB4, with highly effective glyphosate degradation capability, was isolated from soil after enrichment. On the basis of the Biolog omniLog identification system (Biolog) and 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequencing methods, strain CB4 was identified as Bacillus cereus. Further experiments were carried out to optimize the growth of strain CB4 and the glyphosate degradation activity by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The optimal conditions were found as follows: initial pH 6.0, incubation temperature 35°C, glyphosate concentration 6 g L(-1), inoculation amount 5% and incubation time 5 days. Under the optimal conditions, stain CB4 utilized 94.47% of glyphosate. This is the first report on B. cereus with a capacity to utilize herbicide glyphosate, and it can degrade glyphosate concentrations up to 12 g L(-1). Metabolization of glyphosate by strain B. cereus CB4 was studied. Results indicated that two concurrent pathways were capable of degrading glyphosate to AMPA, glyoxylate, sarcosine, glycine and formaldehyde as products. Glyphosate breakdown in B. cereus CB4 was achieved by the C-P lyase activity and the glyphosate oxidoreductase activity.

Neomycin is an aminoglycoside antibiotic, which has long been widely used in livestock animals. Thus far, there has been no description that neomycin had antibacterial activity against plant pathogenic bacteria. This research focused on the bacteriostatic action and mechanism of neomycin on plant pathogenic bacteria. Antibacterial experiments indicated that the minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) of neomycin against Erwinia carotovora subsp. carotovora was 0.004 g/L. Experiments have been carried out to confirm a significant positive correlation between the concentration of neomycin and the bacteriostatic activity of neomycin. Moreover, electron microscopy revealed that many cavities were formed in the cells, and the cytoplasm was concentrated. The bacterial membrane was damaged and there was leakage. Finally, the cell lysed. In SDS–PAGE experiments, after treatment with neomycin, the electrophoresis bands appeared shallow. After treatment with neomycin for 6 h, the number of bacteria in Phase I (DNA preparatory period) increased from 65.13% to 82.54% and Phase R (DNA copy period) was reduced significantly from 34.87% to 17.40%. Our current findings indicated that neomycin presented significant antimicrobial activity on plant pathogenic bacteria; the bacteriostatic mechanism of neomycin was such that neomycin inhibited the synthesis of proteins associated with growth and cleavage of bacteria, thus blocking cell division and growth.

Neomycin, produced by Streptomyces fradiae, has been widely used for the treatment of bacterial infections in clinical and agricultural applications. In this study, a neomycin nonproducing mutant of S. fradiae was obtained by gene disruption technique for mutational biosynthesis. A crucial gene neoC (neo7) which encodes 2-deoxystreptamine (2-DOS) synthases was disrupted. The mutant could resume producing neomycin in the presence of 2-DOS. Salen derivatives of 2-DOS were synthesized and individually added to cultures of the mutant. Antibacterial activity of the mutasynthesis products against Staphylococcus aureus and four plant pathogenic bacteria (Pseudomonas solanacarum, Erwinia carotovora, Xanthomonas oryzae, and Xanthomonas campestris) was detected quantitatively by Oxford cup method. It is suggested that all 2-DOS derivatives were incorporated by the mutant into new active neomycin analogs except for 2-DOS derivative 2d ((1R,2r,3S,4R,6S)-4,6-bis((E)-3,5-di-tert-butyl-2-hydroxybenzylideneamino)cyclohexane-1,2,3-triol). Neomycin analogs produced by feeding 2-DOS derivative 2a ((1R,2r,3S,4R,6S)-4,6-bis((E)-2 hydroxybenzylideneamino)cyclohexane-1,2,3-triol) to cultures of the mutant displayed a similar antibacterial activity with neomycin produced by wild strain.

A series of 1-ethyl-6-fluoro-1,4-dihydro-4-oxo-7(1-piperazinyl)quinoline-3-carboxylic acid (norfloxacin) derivatives were prepared according to the principle of combinating bioactive substructures and tested for their activities against five plant pathogenic bacteria and three fungi in vitro. The preliminary bioassays indicated that almost all synthesized target compounds retained the antibacterial activities of norfloxacin and had some antifungal activities as carboxylic acid amide compounds. The activities of compounds 1 and 22 against Xanthomonas oryzae were better than norfloxacin and all tested compounds had better antibacterial activities as compared to the agricultural streptomycin sulfate (a commercial bactericide) against X. oryzae, Xanthomonas axonopodis and Erwinia aroideae. Additionally, compounds 2 and 20 displayed good antifungal activities against Rhizoctonia solani and their inhibition of growth reached 83% and 94% respectively at the concentration of 200 mg/L.

A novel insecticidal protein (Pr596) produced by Serratia marcescens HR-3 was found be a metalloprotease and responsible for insecticidal activity toward locusts. Two pairs of primers were designed to amplify Pr596, a putative open reading frame (ORF) by similarity search and the N-terminal amino-acid sequence of insecticidal protein. The results revealed that the ORF consisted of 1464 nucleotides encoding a protein of 487 amino-acid residues. Pr596 was cloned into expression vector pET32a(+) and was expressed in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3)/pLysS strain with isopropyl-beta-D-thiogalactopyranoside induction. The Pr596 was found to be highly expressed as inclusion bodies by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). Pr596 inclusion bodies were isolated and subjected to Ni-NTA His Bind Resins (Pharmacia, Germany). Pr596 purified and refolded was revealed by SDS-PAGE and had proteolytic activity and insecticidal activity. Results suggested that there is a potential to develop this protein to be used as an alternative locus control agent.