SuperSIT - Sustainable Sterile Insect Technique

迫切需要新的、清洁的、安全的和更有效的方法来控制蚊媒病毒。一种有吸引力的方法是释放不育的雄性蚊子与野生雌性蚊子交配，从而降低它们的繁殖潜力-不育昆虫技术（SIT）。但是，特别调查组需要经常释放大量的这类男性。提出了一种全新的SIT变体，它是可持续的和持久的- SuperSIT。如果成功开发和部署，这将提供有效，环境友好，物种特异性控制的既定（由PI和其他人）益处，同时显着（20- 100倍）减少所需的不育雄性数量，从而降低交付成本。环境持久性的大大改善也将减少特别投资信托基金受中断影响的脆弱性;再加上减少资源需求和即使在资源有限的情况下也有可能低成本就地部署，这使得该方法比目前的替代办法更具可持续性。新方法将在Ae开发。埃及伊蚊是（例如）该项目利用库蚊的特定生物学特征促进发育，并利用PI在应用昆虫合成生物学方面的长期经验，研究了登革热、基孔肯雅病和寨卡病毒。该项目包括五个目标，其中三个是独立的，平行的synbio路径，以提供SuperSIT概念的新遗传性状。这种并行方法降低了这个雄心勃勃的高风险/高回报项目的开发风险。另一个目标旨在提供一种补充菌株，以促进大规模生产，而最终目标则包括对新菌株的复杂迭代测试。大量的初步数据支持该方案的每一个必要步骤。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;在该项目范围内不设想任何实地释放。

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.