Structure and function of Bacillus thuringiensis pore-forming insecticidal toxins
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis is the most extensively used environment-friendly bioinsecticide worldwide. It produces a variety of crystalline proteins which are specifically lethal to different insect species. Following solubilization in the midgut lumen of susceptible insect larvae and binding to specific receptors located on the surface of the luminal membrane of midgut epithelial cells, the toxins insert into the membrane and form pores that abolish transmembrane ionic gradients which are vital for cellular functions. The three-dimensional structures of four B. thuringiensis Cry toxins have been elucidated. They share a similar three-domain structure in which domain I, composed of amphipathic α-helices, plays a crucial role in pore formation. The other two domains are composed of β-sheets and are responsible for receptor binding and toxin specificity. The mechanism by which these toxins insert into the cell membrane remains one of the most challenging biophysical questions regarding their mode of action. It involves extensive conformational changes in the toxin molecule and assembly of an oligomeric structure composed of a yet undetermined number of toxin subunits. A better understanding of these events is gradually emerging from the analysis of the functional properties of genetically engineered mutant toxins using a variety of biophysical techniques.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".