Fatal blow

Johnson Wax, a US based company,
has come up with a microbe-based
insecticide that, it claims, will be
able to put off the most persistent of
cockroaches. Two varieties of the
microbe, Bacillus thuringiensis,
have been identified that can give
cockroaches lethal cases of indigestion, Different strains of the
microbe produce different proteins,
some of which are fatal to the cockroaches. Johnson Wax and a
biotechnological farm, Mycogen Inc
have devised a way to ferment the
microbes in heat tanks and then
artificially synthesise the protein
crystals inside them.