SuperSIT - Sustainable Sterile Insect Technique

SuperSIT - 可持续昆虫不育技术

• 批准号: EP/X025535/1
• 负责人: Luke Alphey
• 金额: $ 272.45万
• 依托单位: University of York
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FX025535%2F1
• 关键词: SuperSIT; Sustainable; Sterile; Insect; Technique

New, clean, safe, and more effective methods for controlling mosquito-borne viruses are urgently required. One attractive approach is to release sterile male mosquitoes to mate wild females, thereby reducing their reproductive potential - the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT). However, SIT requires frequent releases of very large numbers of such males. A radical new SIT variant is proposed, which is sustainable and persistent - SuperSIT. If successfully developed and deployed, this will provide the established (by the PI and others) benefits of effective, environmentally-friendly, species-specific control, while dramatically (20-100x) reducing the number of sterile males needed, thereby reducing cost of delivery. Much improved environmental persistence will also reduce the vulnerability of the SIT to interruptions; together with reduced resource requirements and the possibility of low-cost, local deployment even in resource-constrained settings, this makes the method much more sustainable than current alternatives. The new approach will be developed in Ae. aegypti, the main vector of (e.g.) dengue, chikungunya and Zika, exploiting specific biological features of culicine mosquitoes that facilitate development, and the PI's long experience of applied insect synthetic biology. The project comprises five Objectives, of which three are independent, parallel synbio paths to providing the novel genetic traits of the SuperSIT concept. This parallel approach mitigates development risk in this ambitious, high-risk/high-return project. Another Objective aims to provide a complementary strain to facilitate mass-production, while the final one incorporates the sophisticated, iterative testing of the novel strains. Substantial preliminary data support each necessary step in the programme. The aim of this project is to develop initial prototype strains and assess their performance in laboratory cage experiments; no field releases are envisioned within the scope of this project.

迫切需要新的，干净，安全，更有效的控制蚊子传播病毒的方法。一种有吸引力的方法是释放无菌雄性蚊子与野生女性交配，从而降低其生殖潜力 - 无菌昆虫技术（SIT）。但是，SIT需要经常发行大量此类男性。提出了一种激进的新SIT变体，可持续且持久 - 超级。如果成功开发和部署，这将为有效，环保，特定物种特定控制的既定好处（由PI和其他）提供，同时（20-100X）减少所需的无菌男性数量，从而降低交付成本。大大改善的环境持久性也将减少SIT中断的脆弱性；加上降低的资源需求以及在资源受限的设置中即使在本地部署的可能性也可能使该方法比当前的替代方案更具可持续性。新方法将在AE中开发。埃及（例如）登革热，奇科尼亚（Chikungunya）和Zika的主要向量，利用了促进发育的库利氨酸蚊子的特定生物学特征，以及PI对应用昆虫合成生物学的悠久经验。该项目包括五个目标，其中三个是独立的，平行的合成道路，以提供超级概念的新遗传特征。这种平行的方法减轻了这个雄心勃勃的高风险/高回报项目中的发展风险。另一个目标旨在提供互补的菌株以促进批量生产，而最后一个目标则结合了新型菌株的复杂，迭代测试。实质性的初步数据支持程序中的每个必要步骤。该项目的目的是开发初始原型菌株并评估其在实验室笼实验中的性能；在该项目的范围内，没有任何字段发布。