For Researchers
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Population suppression with dominant female-lethal alleles is boosted by homing gene driveJinyu Zhu, Jingheng Chen, Yiran Liu, Xuejiao Xu, Jackson Champer, bioRxiv, 2023.
Methods to suppress pest insect populations using genetic constructs and repeated releases of male homozygotes have recently been shown to be an attractive alternative to older sterile insect technique based on radiation. Female-specific lethal alleles have substantially ... |
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The effect of migration on transmission of Wolbachia in Nilaparvata lugensZhigang Liu, Tiejun Zhou, Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 20. 2023.
Brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens, which can transmit rice ragged stunt virus, is a serious and damaging pest to rice plants. Rice plants can protect themselves from the associated diseases of N.lugens by either suppressing or replacing N.lugens by releasing N.lugens infected ... |
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Transformative Approaches for Sustainable Weed Management: The Power of Gene Drive and CRISPR-Cas9Kumam, Y.; Trick, H.N.; Vara Prasad, P.V.; Jugulam, M., Genes, 14. 2023.
Weeds can negatively impact crop yields and the ecosystem’s health. While many weed management strategies have been developed and deployed, there is a greater need for the development of sustainable methods for employing integrated weed management. Gene drive systems can be ... |
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Viruses that ‘infect’ viruses: Cas12f1 and Cas9 gene drive in HSV1Hongsheng Dai, Qiaorui Yao, Zhuangjie Lin, Keyuan Lai, Xianyin Zeng, Guangxiong Lei, Tongwen Zhang, bioRxiv, 2023.
Cas9-based synthetic gene drives constitute some minimal elements capable of editing DNA with sequence specificity. However, they face high resistance rate and mitigation strategies developed so far are difficult to implement. Here, we engineered herpes simplex virus type 1 ... |
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A population modification gene drive targeting both Saglin and Lipophorin impairs Plasmodium transmission in Anopheles mosquitoesEmily I Green, Etienne Jaouen, Dennis Klug, Roenick Proveti Olmo, Amandine Gautier, Stéphanie Blandin, Eric Marois, eLife, 12. 2023.
Lipophorin is an essential, highly expressed lipid transport protein that is secreted and circulates in insect hemolymph. We hijacked the Anopheles coluzzii Lipophorin gene to make it co-express a single-chain version of antibody 2A10, which binds sporozoites of the malaria ... |
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Rapid turnover of pathogen-blocking Wolbachia and their incompatibility lociDylan Shropshire, William R. Conner, Daniel Vanderpool, Ary A. Hoffmann, Michael Turelli, Brandon S. Cooper, bioRxiv, 2023.
At least half of all insect species carry maternally inherited Wolbachia alphaproteobacteria, making Wolbachia the most common endosymbionts in nature. Wolbachia spread to high frequencies is often due to cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), a Wolbachia-induced sperm modification ... |
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Homing-based gene drives can introgress rapidly into local genetic backgrounds with minimal chromosomal conversion in Anopheles gambiaeTony Nolan, Poppy Pescod, Giulia Bevivino et al., Research Square, 2023.
CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive control strategies use a homing selfish genetic element which induces a double-stranded break at the target site and is copied into the opposing chromosome, breaking an essential gene and ensuring super-Mendelian inheritance. During the copying process SNPs ... |
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Germline transformation of the West Nile Virus and avian malaria vector Culex quinquefasciatus Say using the piggyBac transposon systemKatherine Nevard, Rajdeep Kaur, Tim Harvey-Samuel, bioRxiv, 2023.
Culex quinquefasciatus Say is a mosquito which acts as a vector for numerous diseases including West Nile Virus, lymphatic filariasis and avian malaria, over a broad geographical range. As the effectiveness of insecticidal mosquito control methods declines, the need has grown to ... |
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A homing rescue gene drive with multiplexed gRNAs reaches high frequency in cage populations but generates functional resistanceJingheng Chen, Shibo Hou, Ruobing Feng, Xuejiao Xu, Nan Liang, Jackson Champer, bioRxiv, 2023.
CRISPR homing gene drive is a potent technology with considerable potential for managing populations of medically and agriculturally significant insects. It induces a bias in the inheritance of the drive allele in progeny, rapidly spreading desired genes throughout the ... |
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Rescue by gene swamping as a gene drive deployment strategyKeith D. Harris, Gili Greenbaum, Cell Reports, 42. 2023.
Gene drives are genetic constructs that can spread deleterious alleles with potential application to population suppression of harmful species. As gene drives can potentially spill over to other populations or species, control measures and fail-safe strategies must be considered. ... |
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Reduced dengue incidence following city-wide wMel Wolbachia mosquito releases throughout three Colombian cities: Interrupted time series analysis and a prospective case-control studyVelez ID, Tanamas SK, Arbelaez MP, Kutcher SC, Duque SL, Uribe A, et al., PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2023.
The introduction of Wolbachia (wMel strain) into Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reduces their capacity to transmit dengue and other arboviruses. Randomised and non-randomised studies in multiple countries have shown significant reductions in dengue incidence following field ... |
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Large-scale releases and establishment of wMel Wolbachia in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes throughout the Cities of Bello, Medellín and Itagüí, ColombiaVelez ID, Uribe A, Barajas J, Uribe S, Ángel S, Suaza-Vasco JD, et al., PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2023.
The wMel strain of Wolbachia has been successfully introduced into Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and has been shown to reduce the transmission of dengue and other Aedes-borne viruses. Here we report the entomological results from phased, large-scale releases ... |
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Meeting Abstracts from the 5th B Chromosome ConferenceAnonymous, BMC Proceedings, 17. 2023.
During preparations for the 5th B-Chromosome Conference (5BCC), rapid and significant progress was observed in the germ-restricted chromosomes (GRCs) study. GRCs are additional chromosomes found only in germ cells and are eliminated from somatic cells in many avian and dipteran ... |
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Modelling and analysis of periodic impulsive releases of the Nilaparvata lugens infected with wStri-WolbachiaXiangjun Dai, Qi Quan & Jianjun Jiao, Journal of Biological Dynamics, 17:1. 2023.
In this paper, we formulate a population suppression model and a population replacement model with periodic impulsive releases of Nilaparvata lugens infected with wStri. The conditions for the stability of wild-N.lugens -eradication periodic solution of two systems are obtained ... |
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Food for thought: Assessing the consumer welfare impacts of deploying irreversible, landscape-scale biotechnologiesMichael S. Jones, Zachary S. Brown, Food Policy, 121. 2023.
Genetically engineered insects have gained attention as regionally deployed pest control technologies, with substantial applications in agriculture for combatting intractable crop pests and diseases. One potential tool is a ‘gene drive’, using CRISPR-based gene editing. In ... |
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Manipulating the Destiny of Wild Populations Using CRISPRRaban R, Marshall JM, Hay BA, Akbari OS., Annual Reviews, 57:361-390. 2023.
Genetic biocontrol aims to suppress or modify populations of species to protect public health, agriculture, and biodiversity. Advancements in genome engineering technologies have fueled a surge in research in this field, with one gene editing technology, CRISPR, leading the ... |
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A framework for identifying fertility gene targets for mammalian pest controlClark, A. C., Edison, R., Esvelt, K., Kamau, S., Dutoit, L., Champer, J., Champer, S. E., Messer, P. W., Alexander, A., & Gemmell, N. J., Molecular Ecology Resources, 00:1–14. 2023.
Fertility-targeted gene drives have been proposed as an ethical genetic approach for managing wild populations of vertebrate pests for public health and conservation benefit. This manuscript introduces a framework to identify and evaluate target gene suitability based on ... |
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Anopheles gambiae on remote islands in the Indian Ocean: origins and prospects for malaria elimination by genetic modification of extant populationsDitter, R.E., Campos, M., Crepeau, M.W. et al., Scientific Reports, 13. 2023.
The mosquito Anopheles gambiae s.s. is a primary malaria vector throughout sub-Saharan Africa including the islands of the Comoros archipelago (Anjouan, Grande Comore, Mayotte and Mohéli). These islands are located at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel in eastern Africa. ... |
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Wolbachia Transinfection Via Embryonic MicroinjectionZhang, M., Xi, Z. , Methods in Molecular Biology, 2739. 2023.
The process of transferring Wolbachia from one species to another to establish a stable, maternally inherited infection in the target species is known as transinfection. The success of transinfection is primarily achieved through embryonic microinjection, which is the most direct ... |
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Efficient sex separation by exploiting differential alternative splicing of a dominant marker in Aedes aegyptiShih-Che Weng, Igor Antoshechkin, Eric Marois, Omar S. Akbari, PLoS Genetics, 2023.
Only female mosquitoes consume blood giving them the opportunity to transmit deadly human pathogens. Therefore, it is critical to remove females before conducting releases for genetic biocontrol interventions. Here we describe a robust sex-sorting approach termed SEPARATOR ... |
