Author Archives: mjscott3

We recently published two papers in a special issue of BMC Genetics on the sterile insect technique. One paper led by Carolina Concha and Ying Yang describes New World screwworm strains that carry an early female lethal conditional genetic system. In … Continue reading →

As we continue to optimize genetic systems for male-only strains, we recently reported that selecting driver and effector transgenes with moderate levels of expression could be an effective strategy to obtain strains with good productivity. Ying Yan was first author … Continue reading →

Our paper on developmental gene expression and assembly of the genome of the New World screwworm fly was published today in Communications Biology. It was a great collaborative effort involving scientists from the USDA-ARS, U. of Cincinnati, U. New Mexico, … Continue reading →

Four people have joined the lab over the past year. Dr. Aki Yamamoto has for many years studied Drosophila melanogaster genetics. He is working on D. suzukii projects, including male-only strains. Alexis Kriete and  Sarah Hudadoff recently completed the first year of … Continue reading →

Our paper on a simple killer-rescue gene drive has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The experimental was done by Sophia Webster, a former PhD student in the lab and the modeling by Michael Vella, a … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

We describe improved transgenic embryonic sexing strains for the Australian sheep blowfly in a recent article in Molecular Genetics and Genomics . We found that promoters from the L. cuprina nullo or Cochliomyia macellaria CG14427 genes drove high levels of tTA expression in the … Continue reading →

Our paper on gene editing in screwworm and blowflies has been published in G3. We describe our efforts to optimize CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing through targeting the brown body gene, which is an ortholog of Drosophila yellow. We then use the … Continue reading →

Our manuscript showing that the no blokes gene is essential for male viability and X chromosome gene expression in the Australian sheep blowfly has been published in Current Biology. The paper can be freely accessed for the next month using … Continue reading →

At a conference in Raleigh in February 2016, we presented a paper on the potential of Cas9-mediated gene drive systems for control of agricultural insect pests. At the meeting a draft manuscript was made available to attendees that described in … Continue reading →