Upadhyay, A., Feltman, N.R., Sychla, A., Janzen, A., Das, S.R., Maselko, M., Smanski, M. (2022). Genetically engineered insects with sex-selection and genetic incompatibility enable population suppression.  eLife 11(): e71230.

FBrf0252722

Research paper

Engineered Genetic Incompatibility (EGI) is a method to create species-like barriers to sexual reproduction. It has applications in pest control that mimic Sterile Insect Technique when only EGI males are released. This can be facilitated by introducing conditional female-lethality to EGI strains to generate a sex-sorting incompatible male system (SSIMS). Here, we demonstrate a proof of concept by combining tetracycline-controlled female lethality constructs with a pyramus-targeting EGI line in the model insect Drosophila melanogaster. We show that both functions (incompatibility and sex-sorting) are robustly maintained in the SSIMS line and that this approach is effective for population suppression in cage experiments. Further we show that SSIMS males remain competitive with wild-type males for reproduction with wild-type females, including at the level of sperm competition.

PMC8860436 (PMC) (EuropePMC)