# @ncstatecals on YouTube

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://youtube.com/watch?v=4fMCKcO8Psg
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/67236794-ncstatecals-youtube
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/e1fab78415.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-06-19T17:51:42.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NC State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (@NCStateCALS) — https://gondola.cc/NCStateCALS

## Caption

The reemergence of the New World screwworm in the United States has put the livestock industry on high alert. 🪰 To explain the parasite and the technique used to fight it, we talked to one of the world’s premier New World screwworm experts — NC State entomologist Maxwell Scott.

The New World screwworm is a flesh-eating parasite that targets living mammals, laying eggs in open wounds that can quickly turn fatal if left untreated. For decades, populations have successfully been controlled with the sterile insect technique — the release of sterilized males to mate with wild females, which prevents them from reproducing.

The recent identification of the parasite in Texas and New Mexico requires advanced biological solutions, and through U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded research, Scott and his team have developed a male-only line of sterile screwworms that’s now under review with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the name NovoFly. 

The male-only strain developed by his lab carries a gene that is lethal to females but is repressed by adding tetracycline to the diet. This allows mass-rearing facilities to efficiently expand populations and produce only sterile males for release by removing tetracycline from the final generation’s diet. Scott’s newest research will focus on the use of new CRISPR-based methods for producing sterile males.

Learn more about the NC State research going on in Scott’s lab to suppress the New World screwworm population: https://cals.ncsu.edu/news/nc-state-expert-offers-insight-on-stopping-the-new-world-screwworm/

#NewWorldScrewworm #Parasite #Science

## Stats

- **Views:** 619
- **Likes:** 5
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 1

## Tags

science, parasite, newworldscrewworm

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