Cloning Serratia entomophila antifeeding genes--a putative defective prophage active against the grass grub Costelytra zealandica.

Serratia entomophila and Serratia proteamaculans (Enterobacteriaceae) cause amber disease in the grass grub Costelytra zealandica (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae), an important pasture pest in New Zealand. Larval disease symptoms include cessation of feeding, clearance of the gut, amber coloration, and eventual death. A 155-kb plasmid, pADAP, carries the genes sepA, sepB, and sepC, which are essential for production of amber disease symptoms. Transposon insertions in any of the sep genes in pADAP abolish gut clearance but not cessation of feeding, indicating the presence of an antifeeding gene(s) elsewhere on pADAP. Based on deletion analysis of pADAP and subsequent sequence data, a 47-kb clone was constructed, which when placed in either an Escherichia coli or a Serratia background exerted strong antifeeding activity and often led to rapid death of the infected grass grub larvae. Sequence data show that the antifeeding component is part of a large gene cluster that may form a defective prophage and that six potential members of this prophage are present in Photorhabdus luminescens subsp. laumondii TTO1, a species which also has sep gene homologues.