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Science 31 March 2000:
Vol. 287. no. 5462, pp. 2474 - 2476
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5462.2474
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Reports

Insect Population Control Using a Dominant, Repressible, Lethal Genetic System

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.

1 Department of Zoology,
2 Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
3 School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PT, UK.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Luke.Alphey{at}zoo.ox.ac.uk

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