UC San Diego

The burden of mosquito-borne diseases is a problem that needs to be addressed with bettertools. The use of genetics for their control is a promising strategy that has advantages to the use of traditional control methods. However, more work needs to be done before we could implement genetic strategies as actual control approaches in the field. For population modification approaches, effective effectors need to be developed to target different pathogens and strains of a pathogen. In order to be effective, these effectors need to be able to confer at least 100% pathogen resistance with a minimal fitness impact on the transgenic insect. For population suppression approaches, such as RIDL, transgenic insects cannot have their fitness compromised by tetracycline because their effectiveness depends on the competition between wildtype males to mate with females. The first aim of my thesis involved engineering novel and effective effector transgenes to generate pathogen-resistant mosquitoes. Two different effectors (targeting the ZIKV and four DENV serotypes) were generated that conferred up to 100% resistance to the pathogen. The second aim was to generate a comprehensive developmental transcriptome of Aedes albopictus, an understudied mosquito capable of causing mosquito-borne epidemics. This transcriptome will not only provide a valuable molecular resource for others, but it will aid in the development of effective genetic control strategies against this mosquito. Finally, the final aim of my thesis involved developing and testing novel conditional transactivatable systems for controlling gene expression in the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster. The results of this work show five prokaryotic operon systems (that were never tested in an animal model) are useful as transactivational systems and for genetic circuits.