Researcher Is Awarded a Federal Grant to Help Win the War on Bugs

Jennifer S. Sun, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers, will study how microbes influence insect chemosensory behavior

Bugs are formidable foes, spreading disease and destroying billions of dollars in crops annually. Conventional controls, such as insecticides, are losing their effectiveness amid growing resistance and environmental concerns.

Novel controls are needed - and a Rutgers-New Brunswick researcher has been awarded $2.1 million in federal funding to find them.

Jennifer S. Sun, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers-New Brunswick, has received a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health to study how microbes influence insect behavior.

Sun said her research could help identify new ways of controlling insect pests that are safe and effective.

"We want to find insect control strategies that are precise, species-specific and gentle on our environment," she said.

At the heart of her research are efforts to understand the role of bacteria and fungi in the sensory systems that drive an insect's instinct to eat, mate and reproduce.

Sun's past work has demonstrated the importance of bacteria to fly's ability to find food. Her team also has extended its investigations to mosquitoes, demonstrating that their desire to seek a blood meal may be driven by microbes on the sensory organs rather than in the gut, as was long believed.

The National Institutes of Health award will support Sun's lab to conduct three connected lines of study over the next five years:

First, her team will raise germ-free fruit flies and mosquitoes to determine how microbes affect olfactory behavior-regulating proteins on the insects' mouths, antennae, legs and wings.

Second, through field collections throughout New Jersey, they will investigate environmental drivers of insect-microbe interactions, mapping how climate, pollution and habitat shape microbial communities in sensory organs and, in turn, influence insects' actions.

Finally, they will test whether certain bacteria and fungi might modulate insect behavior, paving the way for potential alternatives to chemical insecticides.

Sun's work has implications for both health and agriculture. In New Jersey, the Asian tiger mosquito is well established and transmits a range of diseases, including dengue, Zika and chikungunya. At the same time, fruit flies, such as the spotted-wing drosophila, pose threats to the state's soft-fruit and berry industries.

Globally, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that invasive pests cause at least $70 billion in farm losses every year, while a 2016 assessment by French researchers found that associated health losses top $6.9 billion annually.

But most chemical control strategies are either failing because of insecticide resistance or falling out of favor because of the dangers to human and ecological health.

Sun's connection to Rutgers is long-standing. She studied Molecular Biology and Biochemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences from 2009 to 2013, returning in 2019 as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology.

In 2022, she received a Rutgers Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, which supported the first two years of the research program now funded by the MIRA grant.

Explore more of the ways Rutgers research is shaping the future.

Funding for this study was provided by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences under award number R35GM165839. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.