The cereulide-producing B. cereus strain NVH 1257 was used for positive control. The Bacillus spp. strains were tested for their ability to produce cereulide under standard conditions, essentially as described by Andersson et al. (2004), with minor modifications. The cereulide-producing strain NVH 1257 was used as a positive control. The virulence properties of the various strains were assessed by comparing the killing effect, by injection into the haemocoel and selleck by oral force feeding. The tests were performed with G. mellonella last-instar larvae weighing about 200 mg, reared at the

INRA laboratory by free feeding on pollen and beeswax at 25 °C. The general protocols have been described earlier (Bouillaut et al., 2005). Briefly, both oral and haemocoel infections were performed with exponential growth phase bacteria

(OD600 nm≈1–2). The needed volume (≈1–3 mL) of bacterial Luria–Bertani culture was centrifuged at 20 000 g. for 5 min, and pellets were suspended in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), pH 7, either alone (for haemocoel) or in Cry1C toxin diluted in PBS (0.3 mg mL−1) ATR inhibitor for oral infection. A total of 300 μL suspension was prepared for each dose in order to infect 20 larvae with 10 μL of this suspension. For haemocoel infections, tested doses were from 5.0 × 103 to 1.4 × 104 bacteria per larva and oral infection was performed with 3–7 × 106 bacteria per larva. Cry1C toxin is necessary for sacrifice by oral infection because neither the toxin nor bacteria alone confer high mortality (Salamitou et al., 2000); meanwhile, the exact role of the synergistic effect of Cry1C toxin is not yet elucidated. Bacterial suspensions used for infection

experiments were quantified by plate counting for every experiment, as confirmation of estimated dose from measurements of OD600 nm before infection. Tests were repeated at least three times. Control larvae were injected with PBS, pH 7.4, or PBS and Cry1C for oral infection. Infected larvae were kept at 15 and 37 °C [five larvae per Petri-dish (5 cm diameter) without food] and mortality was recorded at 24, 48, 66, 96 and 120 h postinfection. Mortality Isoconazole analyses comparing temperature, time, strains and route of infection were carried out using regression analysis. The dataset consisted of 505 observations from two species and seven strains (four B. weihenstephanensis and three B. cereus strains). Linear regression was performed with mortality as the response variable and categorical factors: temperature (low=15 °C, high=37 °C), species (B. cereus, B. weihenstephanensis), hours after infection (numerical) and infection route (haemocoel=haemocoel injection, oral=oral force feeding) as predictor variables. To account for the inherent time aspect of mortality, two interaction terms were added to model interconnectivity between hours after infection and both infection route and temperature.