Pesticide resistant insects are a big problem in the farm field. But San Diego scientists have found a way to turn their mutations around through a new strain of bugs that are pesticide susceptible.
Many of the pests that eat our farm crops have been sprayed with pesticides so much they have evolved resistance and can’t be killed by them, just like some bacteria have evolved to become resistant to antibiotics.
“So if you can make the insects sensitive to it again, then you can just keep on using the same pesticides we already have that work, but at much lower frequency and much lower doses,” said Ethan Bier, professor of biology at UC San Diego. “So the total burden you put on the environment could go down by orders of magnitude, potentially.”
Bier said the drive works quickly as the engineered insects breed with local populations. They can make a local population of bugs 100 percent pesticide vulnerable within ten generations. Bugs breed ten generations in about six months. “We’ve been able to use this genetic strategy we’ve been working on where you essentially drive a trait into a population,” Bier said.“We’ve been able to do that in a way that the only thing that is left after you’re done is the population like it used to be. So you’ve rewilded it and there’s no genetic scar of any kind. There is no other element that is added.”Fruit fly geneticist and professor of biology Ethan Bier stands in his UCSD lab, Nov. 27, 2024.
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