%0 Journal Article
%T Precision Editing of Insect Microbiomes with Phages: A Safety-by-Design Agenda for Targeted and Reversible Symbiont Manipulation
%A Mohammed Al-Mutawa
%A Khalid Al-Otaibi
%A John Carter
%J Entomology and Applied Science Letters
%@ 2349-2864
%D 2026
%V 13
%N 2
%R 10.51847/HJmizsr7fX
%P 43-54
%X Insect-associated microorganisms contribute to nutrition, development, immunity, detoxification, reproduction, pathogen susceptibility, and ecological adaptation, making microbiome manipulation a potentially powerful route for studying and modifying insect phenotypes. Conventional community-level interventions, however, often lack the taxonomic and functional resolution needed to alter a selected bacterial population without producing broader ecological disturbance. Bacteriophages offer a potentially more precise intervention class because their host-recognition structures, infection programmes, lytic activity, and capacity to deliver programmable genetic cargo can be adapted to bacterial strains or functions. This article develops an evidence-grounded safety-by-design agenda for phage-guided editing of insect microbiomes. It integrates evidence concerning phage targeting, bacterial specificity, symbiont function, resistance evolution, community restructuring, reversibility, containment, environmental exposure, and governance. The synthesis indicates that phages can support targeted bacterial depletion, sequence-specific genetic alteration, and functional manipulation, but the meaning of precision changes across molecular, bacterial, community, host, and environmental scales. Narrow activity in culture does not establish ecological specificity; phage susceptibility does not demonstrate stable functional editing; removal or inactivation of a genetic payload does not ensure community recovery; and targeted manipulation does not itself establish environmental safety. These distinctions are especially important in insects because microbial localization, host life stage, vertical or horizontal transmission, environmental reacquisition, and population connectivity can alter intervention outcomes. The proposed agenda therefore organizes development around explicit target definitions, causal validation, resistance forecasting, community monitoring, reversibility testing, layered containment, and staged ecological evaluation. It is a non-validated conceptual synthesis intended to guide experimental design and responsible evaluation rather than a deployment-ready framework.
%U https://easletters.com/article/precision-editing-of-insect-microbiomes-with-phages-a-safety-by-design-agenda-for-targeted-and-reve-znjnye1fqmflzbe