SBIR Phase I: Oral delivery systems for sterilizing strains of a sexually-transmitted insect virus

这一小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是支持广泛分发和采用有效和高效控制鳞翅目昆虫的杀菌生物农药。鳞翅目昆虫，如玉米穗虫，通过产生抗性来规避某些作物的杀虫特性。 模型表明，在玉米穗虫种群中引入不育昆虫可以抑制种群中抗性个体的发生。 提高这种杀菌昆虫生物农药的口服感染性将改善产品的生产、销售，最重要的是，提高产品的易用性，以支持农民采用。拟议的项目开发了一种功能性口服感染配方，该配方含有性传播、杀菌病毒的特定菌株，即玉米棉铃虫裸病毒2（HzNV 2）。由此产生的技术将适用于原型和测试口服制剂的成年玉米穗蛾。提出了遗传选择和候选基因方法来提高口腔感染性所需的病毒进入复合物的稳定性。该项目将用HzNV-2缺失的基因装饰病毒包膜，从而提高病毒粒子的稳定性。 该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The Broader Impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to support widespread distribution and adoption of sterilizing biopesticides that are effective and efficient to control Lepidoptera. Lepidopterans, such as the corn earworm, circumvent insecticidal properties of certain crops by developing resistance. Models show that incorporating sterile insects in a corn earworm population can suppress the incidence of resistant individuals in the populations. Enhancing oral infectivity of this sterilizing insect biopesticide will improve product manufacturing, distribution and most importantly, ease of use to support farmer adoption.The proposed project develops a functional orally-infectious formula of a specific strain of the sexually-transmitted, sterilizing-virus, Helicoverpa zea nudivirus 2 (HzNV2). The resulting technology will be suitable for prototyping and testing oral formulations for sterilizing adult corn earworm moths. Genetic selection and candidate gene approaches are proposed to improve stability of the virus entry complex required for oral infectivity. This project will decorate viral envelopes with genes absent from HzNV-2 and thereby improve virion stability. The pseudotyped virus will be assayed for increased oral infectivity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.