农林业生产中70%以上的重要害虫都属于鳞翅目，它们对生产造成了巨大的危害。由于缺乏新的方法，对这些害虫防控只能采用化学农药的方法，并由此引起了一系列的环境问题。探索环境友好的害虫防治方法势在必行。因此，我们拟在蚊虫以及家蚕性别控制研究的基础上，用遗传控制的方法来解决这一问题。由于这种方法具有种类特异性，不对非靶标生物造成危害，也不造成环境污染，因此，遗传调控被认为是未来害虫控制的理想选择。. 我们期望通过国际合作，借助James教授和我们团队分别在蚊虫和家蚕中的研究基础，建立几种代表性鳞翅目昆虫如亚洲玉米螟，斜纹夜蛾，小菜蛾的遗传调控方法。我们拟通过建立鳞翅目昆虫高效的遗传转化平台、重要元件的挖掘和基因组编辑等平台，建立这三种鳞翅目害虫的遗传控制品系。这项研究不仅对鳞翅目害虫的治理有着重要的意义，而且对其它类型害虫的遗传控制研究也具有重要的指导性意义。

More than 70% of the pests in agriculture and forest production belong to the order Lepidoptera, which includes the moths. These pests are responsible annually for billions of RMB of economic losses. Most current pest control relies on the use of insecticides and this has brought with it a number of problems including environmental pollution and off-target toxicity to humans and other animals. Furthermore, the development of insecticide resistance requires either the use of more of the pesticide to overcome resistance levels or the development of new pesticides. Neither of these solutions is sustainable and cost-effective. Therefore, there is an urgent need for environmentally-friendly and sustainable pest control methods.. Recent advances in vector mosquito and silkworm sex ratio-control approaches provide the basis for our proposed efforts to develop new theories and methods for lepidopteran pest management using genetic control. Genetic control is designed to be species-specific and the components of genetic control systems are inactive outside the target organism. Therefore there are no harmful effects on non-target organisms and no residuals that would contribute to environmental pollution. These proposed approaches are widely-considered to be the ideal for future pest management. .. The laboratories of the principal investigator, Professor Yongping Huang, and his collaborator, Professor Anthony A. James, have made significant contributions to the development of strategies for genetic manipulation of insects of beneficial, agricultural and medical significance. Their collaborations and discussions over the last two years have focused on identifying common elements for genetic manipulation of insects with the intention of generalizing these approaches to a wide variety of important insects. This process has resulted in the concept of ‘platform’ technologies that we hypothesize can be applied to many pest species. We will test this hypothesis by developing three platform technologies, 1) highly-efficient transgenesis protocols, 2) identifying important genetic elements, such as promoters and target genes, that can be manipulated to produce a favorable phenotype, and 3) genome editing platforms. These platforms will be tested on three representative lepidopteran pests, the Asian corn borer, Ostrinia furnacalis, the oriental leafworm moth, Spodoptera litura, and the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella. We expect this research to not only be important for lepidopteran pests, but also to serve as a template for developing genetic control technologies for pests from other insect orders. .