Reply to: Assessing the efficiency of Verily’s automated process for production and release of male Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes

Reply to: Assessing the efficiency of Verily’s automated process for production and release of male Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes

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J. E. Crawford, K. C. Hopkins, A. Buchman, T. Zha, P. Howell, E. Kakani, J. R. Ohm, N. Snoad, L. Upson, J. Holeman, P. Massaro, S. L. Dobson, F. S. Mulligan and B. J. White,  Nature Biotechnology,  2022.

We appreciate the comments from Bouyer et al. under their mandate as a United Nations agency program (‘to promote the safe and appropriate use of nuclear techniques and related technologies in food and agriculture’) on our paper1 . The centuries-old fight against mosquito-borne disease has entered a new phase that is both exciting and fast-moving. Many promising technologies and techniques have been developed in the past 2 decades, including mosquito colonies stably infected with Wolbachia2 mosquitoes3,4, a CRISPR–Cas9-based gene drive5 nations of these techniques with older approaches (that is, irradiated Wolbachia releases6,7 , genetically modified sterile and even combi). In a world where more than half of all humans are at risk of contracting mosquito-borne diseases across a range of economic and geographic landscapes, we think that an array of tools will be needed to turn the tide against the massive public health burden of these diseases.