Conservation of and temperature-sensitive lethal mutations between and .

The sterile insect technique can suppress and eliminate population outbreaks of the Australian horticultural pest, , the Queensland fruit fly. Sterile males mate with wild females that produce inviable embryos, causing population suppression or elimination. Current sterile insect releases are mixed sex, as the efficient removal of unrequired factory-reared females is not yet possible. In this paper, we assessed the known temperature-sensitive embryonic lethal alleles (G268D, ) and (R977C, ) for potential use in developing genetic sexing strains (GSS) for the conditional removal of females. Complementation tests in wild-type or temperature-sensitive genetic backgrounds were performed using the GAL4-UAS transgene expression system. A wild-type isoform partially rescued temperature lethality at 29°C by improving survivorship to pupation, while expressing failed to rescue the lethality, supporting a temperature-sensitive phenotype. Expression of the wild-type protein rescued the lethality of flies at 29°C. Overexpressing the allele in the wild-type background unexpectedly produced a dominant lethal phenotype at 29°C. The and wild-type alleles were able to compensate, to varying degrees, for the function of the temperature-sensitive proteins, supporting functional conservation across species. and hold potential for developing insect strains that can selectively kill using elevated temperatures; however, alleles with milder effects than will need to be considered.