Novel viral insecticides for forest protection in the age of climate change

With climate change increased perturbations of the forest ecosystem are expected, including range expansion and survival of insect pests. Not only would there be an expanded range of native insects but also some insects are expected to expand further northward into Canada. If left unchecked this will inevitably lead to increased defoliation damage thereby impacting the biodiversity of the species within them and significantly affecting the forestry industry which contributes about $30 billion annually to our balance of trade. Canada could choose to do nothing. Or it could choose to be proactive and devise strategies on how best to preserve our valuable Canadian forest resource and carbon sink in preparation for this inevitability. Our proposal addresses the need for alternative, biological, insect pest control agents, targeted to specific forest pests by harnessing the many advantages of viral based insecticides (specificity, ease of production, native to the ecosystem), but modified to make them more effective. In particular we are developing a platform technology, virus reprogramming, to make any baculovirus more effective. Two virus enzymes, chitinase and cathepsin, normally produced during virus infection, serve to destroy the structural integrity of the diseased insect causing it to literally liquefy. Our reprogrammed native viruses will be designed to produce greater amounts of these two enzymes and at earlier times after infection. We expect the larvae to be killed earlier than normal, thereby reducing feeding damage. To make these changes we would use the virus's own genetic control elements to effect this reprogramming. While initially targeting a baculovirus against the spruce budworm this platform technology could easily be expanded to other forest (and agricultural) insect pest species. Recognizing also that new pests will expand into the Canadian forest and range of native ones will increase, we will also develop a panel of insect cell lines to avariety of such species. These cell lines are critical reagents to help identify, characterize and perhaps manipulate additional microbial pest control agents for these species. Moreover such cell lines are needed for scale up of virus production and quality control.