Protein Engineering,
an Efficient Approach for Controlling
Viruliferous Whiteflies

The economic importance of the whiteflies on the Egyptian agriculture has been recognized a long time ago but viruliferous whiteflies have become a considerable problem in recent years. The largest and most economically significant group of plant viruses transmitted by whiteflies are the geminiviruses. To date, there are no reliable means for controlling or reducing whiteflies populations. In the mean time, traditional breeding methods have failed in producing viral-resistant crops. In order to avoid further environmental hazards resulting from extensive use of chemical insecticides, alternative strategies utilizing biotechnological advances will be evaluated.

In fact, protein engineering has unlimited potential to provide significant advances for science. The creation and modification of proteins may provide solutions to problems in crop improvement that have not been solved by traditional methods. Often, the protein engineering requires to find out the protein of interest which is hidden within a mixture of wild-type proteins. After locating the desired protein, the protein engineering must be able to clone and express it for further analysis.

•  Control the pathogenic whiteflies that cause biotic stress to crop plants in Egypt by genetic engineering.

•  Create an engineered protein for controlling viruliferous whiteflies using the geminivirus coat protein gene.

•  Evaluation of an engineered protein that will be created and used for controlling viruliferous whiteflies.