transgenic insects and a nice weekend

[Richard Worth]

Hi group,

Enough of the Bt corn flap.  Let's skip the middle man and instead of 
making the plants toxic, make the insects toxic to themselves!  The 
great and powerful OZ has spoken.

On a lighter note, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief from the 
cold and the rain.  We finally had a beautiful and WARM!! weekend and 
hit 75 deg. F.  I was out in a canyon on my mtn. bike on Friday 
afternoon and was delighted to see Azures, some Polygonia, and a few 
moths.  The male Azures were all puddling on the side of the trail 
and very fresh.
Cheers, Rich




INSECT POPULATION CONTROL USING A DOMINANT, REPRESSIBLE, LETHAL GENETIC
SYSTEM
March 31, 2000
Science
Volume 287, Number 5462 Issue of 31 Mar 2000, pp. 2474 - 2476
Dean D. Thomas, 1 Christl A. Donnelly, 2 Roger J. Wood, 3 Luke S. Alphey 1*
A major modification to the sterile insect technique is described, in which
transgenic insects homozygous for a dominant, repressible, female-specific
lethal gene system are used. We demonstrate two methods
that give the required genetic characteristics in an otherwise wild-type
genetic background. The first system uses a sex-specific promoter or
enhancer to drive the expression of a repressible transcription factor,
which in turn controls the expression of a toxic gene product. The second
system uses non-sex-specific expression of the repressible transcription
factor to regulate a selectively lethal gene product. Both methods work
efficiently in Drosophila melanogaster, and we expect these principles to be
widely applicable to more economically important organisms.
Richard A. Worth
Oregon Department of Agriculture
Plant Division
rworth at oda.state.or.us
(503) 986-6461