Production and Characterization of Monoclonal Antibodies to Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. canadensis

30 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were produced against Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. canadensis. Out of the these, 6 mAbs were selected for further studies. SDS-PAGE analyses of sonicated antigens of 10 8. thuringiensis strains showed that they generally had both predominant protein antigens of molecular weights of 45 kilodalton (kd) except for shandogiensis and konkukian, and 37kd except for israelensis, tochigiensis, and shandogiensis, respectively. These results indicate that 4kd and 37kd may be important for demonstrating common antigens except for a few strains of B. thuringiensis. In comparing the result of the westem blot using mAbs with that of using polyclonal antibodies to canadensis, we found that immunoreactive proteins of 99 and 39 kd were identified as common antigens, which might act as antigenic determinants, and might be surface or flagella antigens. Reactivities of mAbs with 41 strains of 8. thuringiensis demonstrated that mAbs of C-1, C-3, C-4, C-S and C-6 except C-2 did not recognize epitopes of thuringiensis, but that all of the mAbs recognized epitopes of galleriae, kurstaki, dakota, tolrJokuensis, silo, toguchini, and leesis. The potential applications of the mAbs we produced would be useful tools for the clarification of taxonomy, investigation of antigenic relationship between B. thuringiensis strains, and localization of specific surface and flagella antigens.