Many insect viruses offer a safe and environmentally sound alternative to chemical insecticides.
These naturally occurring agents are quite often specific to particular target insects and do not infect plants or other animals. The full potential of insect viruses as microbial control agents has not been fully realized, however, due to the lack of information on their biology, ecology, and molecular biology. Research in my laboratory is centered on understanding more about the biology and the molecular biology of the interactions between these viruses and their insect hosts with the idea that this information can be used to improve them as microbial control agents. One research project involves developing a sexually transmitted virus as a microbial insecticide. This virus persists in the larval stages of insects and is then induced into productive replication in reproductive tissues causing sterility in adult moths.