Location: Tropical Pest Genetics and Molecular Biology Research Unit
Project Number: 2040-22430-028-013-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Oct 1, 2017
End Date: Sep 30, 2022
Objective:
1. Screen the genomes of existing medfly genetic sexing strains to characterize the mutations causing the temperature sensitive lethal and white pupae traits.
2. Characterize the exact translocation breakpoint between the Y chromosome and the 5th autosome in the males of the Veinna-8 strain that confers these traits to be female specific.
3. Adapt CRISPR-based methods to recreate the translocation in wild type lines.
4. Demonstrate a targeted gene editing approach to re-creating temperature. sensitive lethal in Anastrepha and Bactrocera species.
Approach:
The overall concept of this proposal is to first characterize the mechanism of the existing genetic sexing system in the medfly Vienna-8 strain using forward genetic techniques, validate those methods through reverse genetic screens using targeted gene editing techniques, and then re-create orthologous mutations in wild type lines of Bactrocera and Anastrepha for which robust genetic sexing strains do not currently exist. This is outlined in the following objectives.
