Extraordinary pH - the mechanism of generation of pH 12 in living systems

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Insects are both vital and deadly in their interactions with humans. Although nearly all the world's crops are pollinated by insects, over a million people a year die from insect-borne diseases, and 20% of the world's crops are lost to insect attack. Insects are becoming resistant to many of our most useful insecticides, and few new ones have been brought to market in the last decade. An improved understanding of what makes insects so successful (in terms of species, they are the dominant life form on earth!) is thus vital in allowing us to find new, selective ways of eliminating harmful pests. Many of the most harmful insects (biting flies and mosquito vectors of disease, and crop-destroying caterpillars) have a specialization that is unique in biology; they run part of their guts at extraordinarily alkaline pH, as high as 12. If we can find out how this high pH is generated, we have a unique, selective target that allows us to attack harmful insects selectively. Our strategy is to identify genes that are expressed at high levels in the high-pH regions of the guts of the malaria and yellow fever mosquitoes, and the Bombyx silkworm caterpillar. Such genes will then be knocked out, either in these species directly, or in Drosophila (the fruit fly), a related insect for which genetic tools are particularly powerful. If gut pH is knocked down by such intervention, then we will have identified potential target genes for the development of new insecticides.