UC researchers pioneer more effective method of blocking malaria transmission in mosquitoes

UCI,  UCI News,  2020.

Employing a strategy known as “population modification,” which involves using a CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive system to introduce genes preventing parasite transmission into mosquito chromosomes, University of California researchers have made a major advance in the use of genetic technologies to control the transmission of malaria parasites.

University of California, Irvine postdoctoral researcher Adriana Adolfi, in collaboration with colleagues at UCI, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, followed up on the group’s pioneering effort to develop CRISPR-based gene drive systems for making mosquito vectors resistant to transmitting malaria parasites by increasing gene drive effectiveness in female mosquito progeny.

This work mitigates a big issue with the first gene drive systems, which is the accumulation of drive-resistant mosquitoes that could still transmit malaria parasites,” said UCI vector biologist Anthony James, the Donald Bren Professor of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, who was a co-primary investigator on the study.

“The second-generation gene drive system described in this paper can be applied to any of the several thousand genes that are essential for insects to survive or reproduce,” said UC San Diego Distinguished Professor Ethan Bier, a co-author of the study and science director at the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society. “While it was developed in fruit flies, this system is readily transportable to a broad selection of insect species that serve as vectors for devastating disorders such as Chagas disease, sleeping disease, leishmaniasis and arboviral diseases.”


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