Tephritid fruit fly transgenesis and applications

Authors: Handler, Alfred - Al; SCHETELIG, MARC - Justus-Liebig University

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/14/2022
Publication Date: 11/30/2022
Citation: Handler, A.M., Schetelig, M.F. 2022. Tephritid fruit fly transgenesis and applications. Book Chapter. 416-440. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781800621176.0021.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1079/9781800621176.0021

Interpretive Summary: he ability to achieve gene transfer in economically important insects is a major goal of USDA. The ability to genetically manipulate agriculturally important fruit fly pest species and improve components to sterile insect technique (SIT) control programs presents the possibility to create new strains that eliminate females during rearing and sterilize surviving males for more efficient and cost-effective SIT programs. Scientists at the USDA, ARS, Center for Medical Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology, Gainesville, Florida, in addition to international colleagues having the common goals of creating genetically modified insects, have contributed to this resource to further the transfer knowledge and technology relevant to the improvement of biologically-based control methods of pest species of agricultural and medical importance.

Technical Abstract: Tephritid fruit flies are among the most serious agricultural pests in the world, owing in large part to those species having broad host ranges including hundreds of fruits and vegetables. They are the largest group of insects subject to population control by biologically based systems, most notably the sterile insect technique (SIT). Given the needs for improved SIT, including visible markers for field detection, sexing systems for male-only strains and male sterilization, the possibility of achieving these improvements using genetically modified strains has been a long-standing goal. Thus, it is not surprising that the first report of a transposon-mediated germline transformation of a non-drosophilid insect species was for the tephritid, the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (medfly). The success of this transformation, after many attempts by several labs using the Drosophila P and hobo vector systems, was due largely to the use of the newly discovered and widely active Tc-related Minos element. But of equal importance for transformation of this species were the availability of a white eye (we) mutant host strain, and the cloning of the medfly we+ allele that could be used as mutant rescue marker for transformant selection. This same marker system was then successfully used to transform medfly with the piggyBac and Hermes transposon vector systems. In subsequent years, at least five additional tephritid species have been transformed with piggyBac or Minos, though typically using the more widely applicable fluorescent protein (FP) markers. Together, germline transformation of tephritid species represent the largest number of species from a single family, which has been due in large part to the economic interest in these species and the relative ease of using methods and reagents for transgenesis that have been developed for Drosophila.