ABC Rural Trojan force: researchers say Trojan females look like normal females, but their male offspring are infertile.

Scientists in Australia and New Zealand are working on a new approach in the battle against insect and animal pests, inspired by a fighting tactic from Greek mythology; the Trojan horse.

Pests can eat through crops, wipe out native flora and fauna, and sicken or kill animals and humans.

The New Zealand government estimates that pests cost its primary industries $2 billion per year, in money spent on control measures and loss of earnings due to lost production.

But Professor Neil Gemmell from the Anatomy Department of Dunedin's Otago University believes a new approach to pest eradication using "Trojan females" may ease the pain.

"The Trojan female idea is that, like the Trojan horse in the Troy war, it looks good but it contains something intrinsically bad for that population," he said.

"Our Trojan females look fine, they're normal fertile females, but they produce sons who are infertile which is bad news for the population."

Trojan females are not created through genetic modification, he says, but through a naturally occurring mutation in mitochondrial DNA.

"We could be looking for mutations which occur with the frequency of somewhere around one in 200, one in 300, may be one in 1,000," he said.

"And if we can find them in large populations, which pest populations often are, identify those individuals, bring them into captive situations, breed the females up, then we have a tool potentially we could use for eradication."

See the rest here:
Researchers turn to Greek mythology for 'Trojan female' pest control solution

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Category: Pest Control