{"id":101921,"date":"2020-02-05T11:43:43","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T19:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/scientists-release-genetically-engineered-moths-for-first-time"},"modified":"2020-02-05T11:43:43","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T19:43:43","slug":"scientists-release-genetically-engineered-moths-for-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/scientists-release-genetically-engineered-moths-for-first-time","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Release Genetically Engineered Moths for First Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-release-genetically-engineered-moths-for-first-time.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The diamondback moth is a huge pest. It eats a variety of crops, but is largely resistant to insecticides, resulting in upwards of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/230754443_Estimating_the_Economic_Cost_of_One_of_the_World's_Major_Insect_Pests_Plutella_xylostella_Lepidoptera_Plutellidae_Just_How_Long_Is_a_Piece_of_String\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">$5 billion in losses<\/a> every year.<\/p>\n<p>That could soon change, though, as an international team of researchers has <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.frontiersin.org\/2020\/01\/29\/first-release-of-genetically-engineered-moth-could-herald-new-era-of-crop-protection\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">created a strain<\/a> of genetically engineered diamondback moths that could suppress the pest population in a sustainable way \u2014 and they just released them into the wild for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>For the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fbioe.2019.00482\/full?utm_source=fweb&utm_medium=nblog&utm_campaign=ba-sci-fbioe-genetically-engineered-moth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">study<\/a>, published Wednesday in the journal <em>Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology<\/em>, the researchers engineered the moths so that when the males of the strain mated with wild females, the female offspring would die during the caterpillar life stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The diamondback moth is a huge pest. It eats a variety of crops, but is largely resistant to insecticides, resulting in upwards of $5 billion in losses every year. That could soon change, though, as an international team of researchers has created a strain of genetically engineered diamondback moths that could suppress the pest population [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,1506,412,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-food","category-genetics","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}