MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW - “Until CRISPR, the technology simply wasn’t there,” says Peter Atkinson, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, who is working on modifying the sharpshooter. “We’re entering this new age where genetic control can be realistically contemplated.”
Scientists didn’t know much about the genetics of the glassy-winged sharpshooter until recently. The first draft of its genome was mapped out in 2016, by a group at the USDA and Baylor College of Medicine, in Texas. But the map had gaps. In 2021, researchers at UC Riverside, including Atkinson, filled in many of them to produce a more complete version.
As scientists set out to gene edit more pest species, a better understanding of their biology and genetics will be important, says Linda Walling, a plant geneticist at UC Riverside who is working on the sharpshooter research. “There’s going to have to be a very big investment in understanding biology,” she says. “All we’ve previously wanted to do is just kill them.”
Now, a group at UC Riverside, including Atkinson and Walling, is trying to make those changes.