New strategies for pest insect control by population suppression

Pioneering solutions for pest insect control are urgently needed, as climate change is increasingly driving pests into new geographic areas. The student will address this critical challenge for innovative control solutions by developing new methods for managing key insect pests. The focus will be the Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata, medfly), which is moving into new environments including the UK, and poses a growing threat to agriculture and food security.

The student will harness the potential for insect control of merging CRISPR/Cas9 ‘homing’ gene drives with genetic sex conversion. This strategy can achieve reductions in pest population sizes by driving into a population the means to transform harmful (crop-damaging) females into harmless fertile males. However, a key gap is the absence of any systematic investigation of the relative fitness or effect of competition between XX versus XY males.

This challenge forms the focus of this PhD project, which the student will tackle in two major aims:
(i) Compare the fertility and reproductive success of gene-edited and non-edited XX versus XY males. This objective exploits the natural ability of mothers to start the process of sex determination through maternaly deposited tra. Interruption of this biological process enables the potential for non gene-edited as well as gene-edited sex conversion male offspring.
(ii) Analyse the detailed courtship and behavioural effects of sex conversion using detailed AI and machine learning algorithms.

The student will be immersed within a tailored training environment designed to foster innovation and independence. This will equip the student with state-of-the-art skills in gene editing, bioinformatics and advanced AI analysis, giving them a strong set of varied skills for future career development within pest management or beyond. The student will harness cutting-edge genetic engineering and gene drive technologies to create novel population suppression strategies, with the potential to be applied across multiple pest species.

References

Meccariello, A. et al. Nature Communications 15, (2024)

Leftwich, P. T. et al. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281, (2014)

Nash, W. J. et al. PLoS One 9, (2014)

Leftwich, P. T. et al. Evol Appl 9, 212–230 (2016)

Siddall, A. et al. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology 10, (2022)