Abstract
The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a successful autocidal control method that uses ionizing radiation to sterilize insects. However, irradiation in normal atmospheric conditions can be damaging for males, because irradiation generates substantial biological oxidative stress that, combined with domestication and mass-rearing conditions, may reduce sterile male sexual competitiveness and quality. In this study, biological oxidative stress and antioxidant capacity were experimentally manipulated in Anastrepha suspensa using a combination of low-oxygen conditions and transgenic overexpression of mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (SOD2) to evaluate their role in the sexual behavior and quality of irradiated males. Our results showed that SOD2 overexpression enhances irradiated insect quality and improves male competitiveness in leks. However, the improvements in mating performance were modest, as normoxia-irradiated SOD2 males exhibited only a 22% improvement in mating success compared to normoxia-irradiated wild type males. Additionally, SOD2 overexpression did not synergistically improve the mating success of males irradiated in either hypoxia or severe hypoxia. Short-term hypoxic and severe-hypoxic conditioning hormesis, per se, increased antioxidant capacity and enhanced sexual competitiveness of irradiated males relative to non-irradiated males in leks. Our study provides valuable new information that antioxidant enzymes, particularly SOD2, have potential to improve the quality and lekking performance of sterile males used in SIT programs.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-12-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99594-1
Funding Information
V.S.D. received a fellowship from the International Atomic Energy Agency (BRA16024) and a scholarship from the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). This work was supported, in part, by NSF DEB 1639005, NSF IOS 1257298, the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, and the joint FAO/IAEA CRP Dormancy Management to Enable Mass-rearing to DAH, as well as AFRI Research Initiative Education and Workforce Development Grants 2015-67012-22793 and 2015-67012-25339 and by the Biotechnology Risk Research Grants Program Assessment Grant 2017-33522-27068 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to N.M.T., the Emmy Noether program of the German Research Foundation SCHE 1833/1-1 to M.F.S., USDA-NIFA-AFRI Grant No. 2016-67013-25087 to A.M.H.
Repository Citation
Dias, Vanessa S.; Cáceres, Carlos; Parker, Andrew G.; Pereira, Rui; Demirbas-Uzel, Güler; Abd-Alla, Adly M. M.; Teets, Nicholas M.; Schetelig, Marc F.; Handler, Alfred M.; and Hahn, Daniel A., "Mitochondrial Superoxide Dismutase Overexpression and Low Oxygen Conditioning Hormesis Improve the Performance of Irradiated Sterile Males" (2021). Entomology Faculty Publications. 226.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/entomology_facpub/226
Supplementary Information 1
41598_2021_99594_MOESM2_ESM.xlsx (68 kB)
Supplementary Information 2
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Scientific Reports, v. 11, issue 1, article no. 20182.
© 2021 The Author(s)
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.