Fig. 1

A transgenic female early lethal system for control of the New World screwworm. a Schematic diagram of the genetic constructs used to create female early lethal strains in NWS. A two-component system consisting of a Driver construct that expresses tTAo protein under the control of the Lucilia sericata bottleneck (Lsbnk) promoter and an Effector construct, composed of 21 copies of the tTA binding site, tetO, upstream of the L. sericata apoptotic hid gene. The hid gene contained two mutations (Lshid^Ala2) that should prevent inhibition by MAPK and thus increase activity [22]. The All-in-one construct contains both Driver and Effector cassettes in the same transformation vector. b Two component transgenic lines express both red and green fluorescent markers at the late larval, pupal and adult stages. c Heterozygous and d homozygous female lethality when insects were reared in the absence of tetracycline in the diet. Eight pairs of flies were used for each test, and error bars show the standard error of the mean (n = 3)