Genetic Strategy Reverses Insecticide Resistance

H. Tasoff,  The Current,  2022.

University of California biologists have now developed a method that reverses insecticide resistance using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. A team including UC Santa Barbara researchers Craig Montell(link is external) and Menglin Li(link is external), UC San Diego researchers Bhagyashree Kaduskar, Raja Kushwah and Professor Ethan Bier of UCSD’s Tata Institute for Genetics and Society (TIGS) used the genetic editing tool to replace an insecticide-resistant gene in fruit flies with the normal insecticide-susceptible form. Their achievement, described in Nature Communications(link is external), could significantly reduce the amount of insecticides used. “This strategy could be used to reverse the resistance of mosquito disease vectors that spread devastating diseases that impact hundreds of millions of people each year,” said Craig Montell, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental Biology at UC Santa Barbara.


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