In Mexico, the agriculture sector is an essential resource, producing over 67000 million dollars per year (STATISTA, 2022), and preserving jobs in rural communities. Good examples are the nopal, agave and avocado crops, which have an essential role in the Mexican economy and culture.

Unfortunately, these crops are threatened by constant pest attacks, mainly by Coleopteran insects, that can cause total yield and economic losses. One solution to control pests has been pesticides. Nevertheless, these products cause long-term health problems, water and soil pollution, adverse affectations on beneficial insects as pollinators, and resistance development in target pests.

Figure 1. Nopal crop affected by Cactophagus spinolae

In order to bring beneficial alternatives in the management of pests in nopal, avocado, and agave crops.

Our project aims to develop a solution with synthetical biology tools to help farmers tackle the food demand and the pest problems. All this by avoiding the health problems that conventional pesticides produce.

Spidicide-CX is our proposal as an alternative to conventional pesticides. It is a biopesticide created with synthetic biology, bioinformatic tools and a local perspective.

This biopesticide is based on the use of two spider venom peptides as active compounds, from the Australian tarantula Selenotypus plumipes and the spider Hadronyche versuta. These peptides demonstrated notable characteristics such as specificity for pest insects, being ecological and non-harmful for vertebrates (Hardy et al., 2013; Shen et al., 2018).

For this project, we used Pichia pastoris as the selected chassis of the expression system to execute our genetic circuits containing both peptides (U1-theraphotoxin-Sp1a and Omega-hexatoxin-Hv2a). These peptides interact with the voltage-gated sodium (NaV) and calcium (Cav) channels of the insect’s central nervous system by disrupting their function, causing paralysis, and the eventual death of the insect. In addition, to guarantee the effect of Spidicide-CX, we use the Snowdrop Lectin from the plant Galanthus nivalis agglutinin (GNA) works as a carrier to the hemolymph of insects after oral ingestion (Pusztai, A., & Grant, G., N.D).

Figure 2. General Infographic of Spidicide-CX