Disruption of duplicated yellow genes in Bactrocera tryoni modifies pigmentation colouration and impacts behaviour
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Disruption of duplicated yellow genes in Bactrocera tryoni modifies pigmentation colouration and impacts behaviour Thu N. M. Nguyen1,2 · Vivian Mendez3 · Christopher Ward2 · Peter Crisp4 · Alexie Papanicolaou5 · Amanda Choo2 · Phillip W. Taylor3 · Simon W. Baxter1 Received: 24 June 2020 / Revised: 5 November 2020 / Accepted: 17 November 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Irradiated Queensland fruit flies (Bactrocera tryoni) used in Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) programmes are marked with fluorescent dyes to distinguish them from wild flies when recaptured in monitoring traps. However, coating sterile pupae with powdered dyes can reduce emergence rates and fly quality and can sometimes produce insufficiently certain discrimination through inadequate coating or because the dye is transferred to wild flies through contact. Here we created a phenotypically distinct B. tryoni strain that lacks typical melanisation patterns through CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutagenesis of tandemly duplicated yellow-y genes and then assessed effects of this visible trait on fly performance. Recessive mutations are only required in one of these copies to restrict melanisation and generate a phenotype clearly distinguished from wild type. The yellow strain showed significant declines in eclosion rates and in the percentage of fliers directly after emergence. Locomotor activity was greater in the yellow strain, and these mutations did not generally affect mating probability, copula latency, or copula duration. The longevity of yellow flies was approximately 10 days shorter than wild-type flies in both sexes. Overall, replacing dyes with yellow body marker for SIT can simplify production, eliminate a step that is known to reduce fly quality, remove potentially hazardous dyes from production, enable accurate discrimination from wild flies, and improve cost-effectiveness; however, direct comparisons of the decrements in performance associated with dyes on massreared wild-type flies and disruption of yellow-y genes are now required to determine the relative suitability of these marking methods for B. tryoni SIT. Keywords Queensland fruit fly · Yellow-y · Sterile insect technique · CRISPR/Cas9 · Melanisation
Key message Communicated by Christian Stauffer. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10340-020-01304-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users. * Simon W. Baxter [email protected] 1
School of BioSciences, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2
School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia
3
Applied BioSciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
4
South Australian Research and Development Institute, Adelaide, SA, Australia
5
Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
• Pest control using the sterile insect technique requires
mass releases of irradiat
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