A drug-inducible sex-separation technique for insects

Here, we describe a drug-inducible genetic system for insect sex-separation that demonstrates proof-of-principle for positive sex selection in D. melanogaster . The system exploits the toxicity of commonly used broad-spectrum antibiotics geneticin and puromycin to kill the non-rescued sex. Sex-speci...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2020-04, Vol.11 (1), p.2106-10, Article 2106
Main Authors: Kandul, Nikolay P., Liu, Junru, Hsu, Alexander D., Hay, Bruce A., Akbari, Omar S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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Animals
Antibiotics
Drosophila melanogaster - drug effects
Drosophila melanogaster - genetics
Drosophila Proteins - genetics
Drug dosages
Drug Resistance
Exons
Female
Females
Food
Genes
Genetic Engineering - methods
Geneticin
Genetics, Population
Gentamicins - pharmacology
Homozygote
Humanities and Social Sciences
Insects
Introns
Male
multidisciplinary
Mutation
Offspring
Pest Control
Positive selection
Progeny
Puromycin
Puromycin - pharmacology
Reagents
RNA Splicing
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Separation
Sex
Sex Determination Analysis
Sexes
Splicing
Toxicity
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Description
Summary:Here, we describe a drug-inducible genetic system for insect sex-separation that demonstrates proof-of-principle for positive sex selection in D. melanogaster . The system exploits the toxicity of commonly used broad-spectrum antibiotics geneticin and puromycin to kill the non-rescued sex. Sex-specific rescue is achieved by inserting sex-specific introns into the coding sequences of antibiotic-resistance genes. When raised on geneticin-supplemented food, the sex-sorter line establishes 100% positive selection for female progeny, while the food supplemented with puromycin positively selects 100% male progeny. Since the described system exploits conserved sex-specific splicing mechanisms and reagents, it has the potential to be adaptable to other insect species of medical and agricultural importance. Sorting insects based on sex is error prone and frequently labour intensive. Here, the authors present a drug-inducible sex separation system based on sex-specific rescue from antibotic toxicity.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-16020-2