STABLE TRANSFORMATION OF THE YELLOW-FEVER MOSQUITO, AEDES-AEGYPTI, WITH THE HERMES ELEMENT FROM THE HOUSEFLY

The mosquito Aedes aegypti is the world's most important vector of yel low fever and dengue viruses, Work is currently in progress to control the transmission of these viruses by genetically altering the capacit y of wild Ae, aegypti populations to support virus replication. The ge rm-line transformation system reported here constitutes a major advanc e toward the implementation of this control strategy, A modified Herme s transposon carrying a 4.7-kb fragment of genomic DNA that includes a wild-type allele of the Drosophila melanogaster cinnabar (cn) gene wa s used to transform a white-eyed recipient strain of Ae, aegypti. Micr oinfection of preblastoderm mosquito embryos with this construct resul ted in 50% of the emergent G(0) adults showing some color in their eye s, Three transformed families were recovered, each resulting from an i ndependent insertion event of the cn(+)-carrying transposon, The cn(+) gene functioned as a semidominant transgene and segregated in Mendeli an ratios, Hermes shows great promise as a vector for efficient, herit able, and stable transformation of this important mosquito vector spec ies.