Open AccessTemperature-Inducible Precision-Guided Sterile Insect Technique
Author(s) -
Nikolay P. Kandul,
Junru Liu,
Omar S. Akbari
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the crispr journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2573-1602
pISSN - 2573-1599
DOI - 10.1089/crispr.2021.0077
Subject(s) - sterile insect technique , biology , drosophila melanogaster , sexing , population , crispr , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , gene , pest analysis , medicine , botany , environmental health
Releases of sterile males are the gold standard for many insect population control programs, and precise sex sorting to remove females prior to male releases is essential to the success of these operations. To advance traditional methods for scaling the generation of sterile males, we previously described a CRISPR-mediated precision-guided sterile insect technique (pgSIT), in which Cas9 and gRNA strains are genetically crossed to generate sterile males for mass release. While effective at generating F 1 sterile males, pgSIT requires a genetic cross between the two parental strains, which requires maintenance and sexing of two strains in a factory. Therefore, to advance pgSIT further by removing this crossing step, here we describe a next-generation temperature-inducible pgSIT (TI-pgSIT) technology and demonstrate its proof-of-concept in Drosophila melanogaster. Importantly, we were able to develop a true breeding strain for TI-pgSIT that eliminates the requirement for sex sorting-a feature that may help further automate production at scale.