Female-specific insect lethality engineered using alternative splicing
Female-specific insect lethality engineered using alternative splicing
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DOI：
10.1038/nbt1283
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发表时间：
2007-03-01
影响因子：
46.9
通讯作者：
Alphey, Luke
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fu, Guoliang;Condon, Kirsty C.;Alphey, Luke
昆虫不育技术是一种特定物种的环境友好型害虫控制方法，涉及大量释放不育昆虫，通过不育交配减少野生种群（1-5）。携带雌性特异性自杀遗传系统的昆虫为传统绝育方法提供了一种有吸引力的替代方法（6，7），同时也从释放种群中消除了雌性（7-10）。我们利用昆虫中的性别特异性选择性剪接来设计地中海果蝇Ceratitis capitata中的雌性特异性自杀遗传系统。这些依赖于插入来自C. capitata Transformer基因转化为异源四环素抑制的反式激活因子，使得反式激活因子转录本在雄性剪接变体中被破坏，但在雌性特异性剪接变体中不被破坏。由于这些系统的关键组成部分在广泛的系统发育范围内发挥作用，因此该策略解决了性别特异性表达系统的缺乏问题。例如，在一个实施例中，早期作用的雌性特异性启动子）。该方法可广泛应用于调节其他生物体中的基因表达，特别是用于与合适的启动子的组合控制。
The Sterile Insect Technique is a species-specific and environmentally friendly method of pest control involving mass release of sterilized insects that reduce the wild population through infertile matings(1-5). Insects carrying a female-specific autocidal genetic system offer an attractive alternative to conventional sterilization methods(6,7) while also eliminating females from the release population(7-10). We exploited sex-specific alternative splicing in insects to engineer female-specific autocidal genetic systems in the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata. These rely on the insertion of cassette exons from the C. capitata transformer gene into a heterologous tetracycline-repressible transactivator such that the transactivator transcript is disrupted in male splice variants but not in the female-specific one. As the key components of these systems function across a broad phylogenetic range, this strategy addresses the paucity of sex-specific expression systems (e. g., early-acting, female-specific promoters) in insects other than Drosophila melanogaster. The approach may have wide applicability for regulating gene expression in other organisms, particularly for combinatorial control with appropriate promoters.