Genetic Variation and Potential for Resistance to the tTA Overexpression Lethal System Published

We previously developed a female-specific tTA overexpression system for L. cuprina and C. hominivorax. We found that in some lines females with one copy of the transgene showed high survival but all females died with two copies. This suggested that relatively small changes in the level of tTA expression could significantly impact female survival. In this recently published study, we examined the impact of standing genetic variation on female survival. We used the DGRP resource, a collection of 205 highly bred Drosophila lines. We found a wide variation in female survival in different genetic backgrounds. Thus it will be important to test a transgenic strain  against insects collected from the targeted location.