UMBI's Insect Transformation Facility (ITF) provides a variety of services related to the creation of tranformant insects including embryo microinjections, tranformant strain production and characterization, facility use, consultation, and training.

The ITF has skilled insect transformation professionals with experience and expertise in a wide variety of Diptera of agricultural and biomedical significance including Anopheles stephensi, Anopheles gambiae, and Aedes aegypti as well as Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. The Facility can work with researchers who have interests in applying transgenic technologies to other insects.

The ITF can accommodate a variety of working relationships with researchers including collaborations, subcontracts, and fee-for-services. Call 240-314-6331 to discuss which arrangement is best suited for your project.

What is Insect Transformation?

The stable introduction of genes into animals, plants, and microbes to create transformant organisms is an important technology that is central to contemporary functional genomics research as well as applied industrial biotechnology research and development.

Technology for creating transformant Drosophila melanogaster was developed in 1981 but the technology for transforming insects of direct biomedical and agricultural importance is considerably less well-developed.

The UMBI-Insect Transformation Facility was created to increase the availability of this vital technology to the insect science community.