Location: Natural Products Utilization Research
Project Number: 6060-32000-002-004-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Oct 1, 2016
End Date: Sep 30, 2019
Objective:
1. Discover effective and safe natural product-based insecticides and personal protection technologies for potential use by the military against disease carrying insect vectors.
2. Generate synthetic analogs of natural products with insecticidal properties in order to improve efficacy.
Approach:
Natural products are good sources of arthropod-active compounds, because plants and microbes have co-evolved with insects since insects first appeared on earth. Plants and microbes produce arthropod repellents and insecticides, and a relatively large proportion of commercial insecticides are based on natural compounds. Still, relatively few natural products have been evaluated for such activity against disease vector insects. Natural product-based arthropod repellents and insecticides are less likely to have adverse toxicological issues than purely synthetic compounds, and they are more likely to have novel modes of action that will be useful in insecticide resistance management. Our laboratory has access to the largest repository of natural compounds in the world and has unique interactions with entomologists at our location and at several ARS locations for evaluation of extracts and compounds on insects of interest to the military, general public and to agriculture. Furthermore, the lab has the capability of performing total synthesis and producing synthetic analogs of natural arthropod repellents and insecticides in order to improve efficacy of natural products.
