Edit, undo: Temporary gene editing could help solve the mosquito problem
Edit, undo: Temporary gene editing could help solve the mosquito problem
Tags: Aedes, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Genomics, Self limiting, Selfish genetic elementsL. Dormehl, digitaltrends, 2020.
Mosquitos aren’t just a pest that nibble on you when you’re trying to get to sleep in the summertime; they’re by far the deadliest animals on the planet. According to the World Health Organization, mosquito bites cause the death of one million people each year. The majority of these are the result of malaria, one of the many human-affecting diseases these tiny bloodsuckers can carry.For this reason, scientists trying to tackle these diseases have explored a range of potential solutions — such as gene drives, referring to tiny fragments of DNA that can be inserted into a mosquito’s chromosomes to deplete populations in various ways. But if SyFy original movies have taught us anything, it’s that genetically tweaking organisms and then releasing them can… well, not go quite according to plan.With that in mind, a new Texas A&M AgriLife Research project seeks to test out genetic modifications of mosquitos that would delete themselves from the genetic code after a certain period. This means that “test runs” of genetic changes could be made, knowing that everything will reset to normal after a designated period like one year (which equates to around 20 generations of mosquito).
