In the face of a dwindling repertoire of effective public health chemical control approaches, it is critical to explore broadly to discover new means to control mosquitoes and thereby mosquito-borne disease.  Our approach has been to establish a platform of flexible and tailorable tools to induce a lethal phenotype in mosquitoes.  RNA interference is an attractive means to very specifically target a physiologically essential gene of interest to induce mortality.  An RNAi trigger alone, however, may not persist in the environment and cross the requisite biological barriers to become bioactive and effective. The nuances of RNAi processing in various tissues and mosquito species will be discussed.  In parallel to RNAi trigger discovery, we have explored nanomaterials approaches to insecticidal cargo delivery.  The attributes and dynamics of nanoscale particles with and without cargo will likewise be discussed.

Molecular and nano-scale approaches to biorational control of mosquito vectors

254th National Meeting (2017)

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