UC San Diego

Insects make up the most diverse group of organisms on our planet. Within their diversity, numerous insects have fallen into niches with significant impacts on human lives. Insects can benefit humans through pollination, a source of food and materials, and biological control of pests. In contrast, some insects have detrimental roles in human lives such as through stings and bites but more devastatingly through vectoring deadly diseases. There are numerous insect vectors of disease. One example of an insect vector of disease is the Asian Citrus Psyllid, Diaphorina citri. Through vectoring the phloem-limited alpha-bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter, D. citri spreads the disease Huanglongbing. Currently, HLB is the most destructive disease affecting the citrus industry. In addition to vector disease for plants, some insects vector diseases directly from human to human. For example, Aedes aegypti is the vector for yellow fever, chikungunya, Zika, and dengue viruses and thus the cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. In the past, controlling vector populations have centered around chemical insecticides. While biological control and changes to human behavior have been implemented according to the species and community needs and availability. However the non-specificity and ineffectiveness of these techniques coupled with the increased chance of resistance specifically for chemical insecticides, have rendered these methods inadequate. Recently, with the advent of CRISPR/Cas9 and more accessible means of genetic engineering of insects, novel vector control techniques based on genetic manipulation have been in the front and center. In parallel to genetic-based vector control tools, genetic-based tools for understanding aspects of vector biology have also been created. The work outlined below demonstrates advances in gene modification in insects from the initial steps of developing methods to produce target-specific mutagenesis in D. citri to developing genetic-based tools to aid investigations within Ae. aegypti neural and developmental system.