Pore-forming toxins are biological weapons produced by a variety of living organisms, particularly bacteria but also by insects, reptiles, and invertebrates. These proteins affect the cell membrane of their target, disrupting permeability and leading eventually to cell death. The pore-forming toxins typically transform from soluble, monomeric proteins to oligomers that form transmembrane channels. The Cry toxins produced by Bacillus thuringiensis are widely used as insecticides. These proteins have been recognized as pore-forming toxins, and their primary action is to lyse midgut epithelial cells in their target insect. To exert their toxic effect, a prepore oligomeric intermediate is formed leading finally to membrane-inserted oligomeric pores. To understand the role of Cry oligomeric pre-pore formation in the insecticidal activity we isolated point mutations that affected toxin oligomerization but not their binding with the cadherin-like, Bt-R 1 receptor. We show the helix ␣-3 in domain I contains sequences that could form coiled-coil structures important for oligomerization. Some single point mutants in this helix bound Bt-R 1 receptors with similar affinity as the wild-type toxin, but were affected in oligomerization and were severally impaired in pore formation and toxicity against Manduca sexta larvae. These data indicate the pre-pore oligomer and the toxin pore formation play a major role in the intoxication process of Cry1Ab toxin in insect larvae. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)2 is a Gram-positive bacterium that produces insecticidal Cry toxins. Cry proteins are widely used for insect control in agriculture and forestry and against mosquitoes, due to their high specificity and safety for humans and for the environment (1, 2).Although Bt Cry toxins are widely used as insecticides their mode of action is still not completely understood. These Cry toxins are pore-forming toxins that induce cell death by forming ionic pores following insertion into the membrane, causing osmotic lysis of larvae midgut cells (1-3). However, recently an alternative model proposed that these toxins activate a signal pathway through Bt-R 1 receptor interaction, which results in insect cell death without the participation of lytic pores into the membrane (4). It is important to note that this alternative model was proposed based on the effect of Cry1Ab toxin to cultured Trichoplusia ni H5 insect cells expressing the Manduca sexta toxin receptor, Bt-R 1 .Nevertheless, in both models, receptor interaction with exposed regions in domains II and III of Cry1A toxins (1-4) is a key step that determines insect toxicity. In the case of Cry1A toxins, two receptors have been characterized in several lepidopteran species: cadherin-like proteins, known as Bt-R receptors (5) (Bt-R 1 in the case of M. sexta), and glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored proteins, as aminopeptidase-N or alkaline phosphatase (6, 7).In the pore-forming model, it is proposed that both receptors are important and participate in a sequential manner (3,8,9). After proteoly...

AmyA, an ␣-amylase from the hyperthermophilic bacterium Thermotoga maritima, is able to hydrolyze internal ␣-1,4-glycosidic bonds in various ␣-glucans at 85°C as the optimal temperature. Like other glycoside hydrolases, AmyA also catalyzes transglycosylation reactions, particularly when oligosaccharides are used as substrates. It was found that when methanol or butanol was used as the nucleophile instead of water, AmyA was able to catalyze alcoholysis reactions. This capability has been evaluated in the past for some ␣-amylases, with the finding that only the saccharifying fungal amylases from Aspergillus niger and from Aspergillus oryzae present measurable alcoholysis activity (R. I. Santamaria, G. Del Rio, G. Saab, M. E. Rodriguez, X. Soberon, and A. Lopez, FEBS Lett. 452:346-350, 1999). In the present work, we found that AmyA generates larger quantities of alkyl glycosides than any amylase reported so far. In order to increase the alcoholytic activity observed in AmyA, several residues were identified and mutated based on previous analogous positions in amylases, defining the polarity and geometry of the active site. Replacement of residue His222 by glutamine generated an increase in the alkyl glucoside yield as a consequence of a higher alcoholysis/hydrolysis ratio. The same change in specificity was observed for the mutants H222E and H222D, but instability of these mutants toward alcohols decreased the yield of alkyl glucoside.␣-Amylases (EC 3.2.1.1) are retaining glycosidases that catalyze the hydrolysis of internal ␣-1,4-glycosidic bonds in starch through a double-displacement mechanism in which a covalent intermediate glycosyl enzyme is deglycosylated by water (43, 62). ␣-Amylases contain 5 to 11 subsites that bind glucose moieties (8, 51), with their numbers and relative affinities defining their product profiles (38). Like all retaining glycosidases, ␣-amylases can also catalyze transfer reactions, which are the result of employing molecules other than water as glucosyl acceptors, such as carbohydrates (transglycosylation reactions) or alcohols (alcoholysis reactions). When a highmolecular-weight alcohol is used as an acceptor, the product is an alkyl glycoside with surface tension activity properties that are important in several industrial applications. Therefore, the extremely laborious and inefficient chemical synthesis of alkyl glycosides presents an opportunity to develop enzymatic methods devoted to increasing the yields and specificities of these reactions.The feasibility of alcoholysis reactions using various exoglycosidases has been extensively investigated (references 57 and 65 and references therein), and although efficient processes have been developed using activated substrates, such as pnitrophenyl-glucoside or p-nitrophenyl-galactoside, with ␣-and ␤-glucosidases and galactosidases, the use of a readily available substrate, such as starch or amylodextrins, could prove attractive if efficient reactions employing ␣-amylases are developed.For a given degree of starch depolymerization, endoa...

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Some α-amylases besides catalyzing the hydrolysis of α-1,4 glycosidic bonds in starch are also capable of carrying out some transglycosylation activity. The importance of aromatic residues near the catalytic site in determining the ratio of these two competing activities has been remarked in the past. In the present work we investigated the role of residue 260 in the product profile of the α-amylase AmyA from Thermotoga maritima. This phenylalanine residue, two positions after the glutamic acid/base catalyst was substituted by both tryptophan and glycine residues, showing opposite behaviors. The tryptophan mutant displayed a very similar product profile pattern to that of the wild-type enzyme; while the mutant Phe260Gly showed a higher transglycosylation/hydrolysis ratio. When the Phe260Trp mutation was constructed in the context of His222Gln, a mutant we have already reported with an increased transglycosylation/hydrolysis ratio and a higher alcoholysis activity, the resultant enzyme showed an apparent higher hydrolysis/transglycosylation ratio and a change to shorter products pattern than the single mutant enzyme, still maintaining the increased alcoholytic activity provided by the His222Gln mutation. The mutant Phe260Gly, on the other hand showed by itself a higher alcoholytic activity, similar to that of the His222Gln mutant.