Developing High-throughput screens for pesticides targeting insect ion channels

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Insect pests cause billions of dollars of damage to Canadian agriculture. In spite of recent advances in pest-resistant genetically modified plants (GMOs), pesticides continue to be the most important defense farmers have against crop loss and insolvency. However, the future of current pesticides is threatened by the evolution of resistance in pests and concerns about the impact of existing pesticides on the environment and on human health. By studying the physiology of the fruit fly, we have come to a better understanding of the insect physiology and identified what we believe to be a valuable new target for the development of the next generation of pesticides. We found that insects use an ion channel, CG7589, to regulate secretion and digestion. The CG7589 channel is essential to the viability of the fruit fly and therefore a pesticide that interferes with the channel's function will be lethal. Because the CG7589 channel is only found insects and related organisms (mites, ticks etc.), a pesticide specifically targeting the channel will not harm humans or other beneficial (non-arthropod) organisms. Finally, because no existing pesticide targets CG7589, organisms that are resistant to other pesticides are unlikely to be resistant to a pesticide targeting CG7589. Our goal in this project is to develop the tools to find such a pesticide. That will involve expressing CG7589 in a cultured cell line such that the channel is functional but does not harm the cells and so that the activity of the channel can be monitored using voltage-sensitive dyes that record the effects of CG7589 on cell physiology. When we have developed such a cell line, we will perform a pilot drug screen to see whether we can use it to identify potential pesticides.