Gene Drive in the News

A curated collection of articles from the popular press

Imperial College London hosts West African journalists for science media programme

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Nana Appiah Acquaye,  Tech Review Africa,  2026.
Imperial College London has hosted a delegation of journalists from Ghana and Nigeria under the UK-Ghana Science, Technology and Innovation (ST&I) Media Capacity Programme. The initiative, supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the British High Commission ...

As mosquitoes go year-round in L.A., a promising fix hits a snag

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Lila Seidman,  Los Angeles Times,  2026.
Residents were supposed to get a respite from the ankle-nipping mosquitoes that fueled a recent surge in dengue fever in Los Angeles County. Typically, the invasive mosquitoes — called Aedes aegypti — essentially disappear from winter until early May in the region. Instead, ...

Ifakara’s Transmission Zero team convenes stakeholders to review project progress

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Ifakara Health Institute,  2026.
The Transmission Zero Program’s team at the Ifakara Health Institute hosted key stakeholders from government and research institutions in Dar es Salaam on March 17-18, to review progress and strengthen collaboration on the Transmission Zero project, an international research ...

Prairie grower groups fund research projects targeting canola diseases

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Ian MacKay,  Oyen Echo,  2026.
Three projects intended to deal with the canola disease verticillium stripe stand out among 11 research programs that a prairie growers consortium is funding this year. Leaders of the canola agronomic research program have chosen projects that they feel are “key to advancing ...

African scientists lead in Malaria research

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Florian Jamax,  Daily News,  2026.
For decades, African scientists have contributed essential data to global scientific research. Increasingly, however, they are no longer just contributors. Across the continent, researchers are assuming leadership roles, designing studies, building advanced laboratories and ...

Selfish sperm hijack Overdrive gene to kill healthy rivals

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Lisa Potter,  Phys.org,  2026.
A new University of Utah-led study has discovered the mechanism behind a decades-old evolutionary mystery—how "selfish chromosomes" cheat the rules of genetic inheritance. The researchers found that rogue chromosomes hijack the Overdrive (Ovd) gene to destroy rival sperm. The ...

Feral rabbit numbers are booming, so do myxomatosis and calicivirus still work, and what’s next for biocontrol?

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Belinda Smith,  ABC News,  2026.
If you've noticed more feral rabbits around than usual, you're right. Much of Australia is experiencing a bunny boom, driven by consecutive years of good breeding conditions. But with an estimated 200 million feral European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) currently hopping around ...

Equatorial Guinea’s high-tech push to end malaria by 2030

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Ronald Musoke,  The Independent,  2026.
In the humid equatorial belt of Central Africa; where dense forests, heavy rains and winding rivers create ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes, malaria has long been a stubborn public health adversary. For Equatorial Guinea, the disease has shaped health outcomes, economic ...

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine joins the Target Malaria Consortium

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Dr. Tony Nolan,  Target Malaria: News,  2026.
Target Malaria has so far been working on the three widespread vectors of the Anopheles gambiae species complex: An. coluzzii, An. gambiae, and An. arabiensis. As members of a species complex, these three species are morphologically indistinguishable. Together, they are among ...

Is a ‘selfish gene’ making a Utah family have twice as many boys as girls?

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Ewen Callaway,  Nature,  2026.
By sifting through an anonymized genealogy database, researchers have discovered a Utah family that has been having twice as many boys as girls for seven generations. It is the first clear evidence that humans might have ‘selfish genes’ that distort the sex ratio of offspring ...

“Millions have been released.” Hawaii’s beautiful birds are dying. But scientists have a controversial plan to save them

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James Fair,  BBC Wildlife Magazine,  2026.
About 6-7 million years ago, common rosefinches – which are today found across a vast expanse of northern Eurasia and are even occasional winter visitors to the British Isles – island-hopped their way from the Russian Far East across the Pacific Ocean and arrived in the newly ...

Space Coast releases X-rayed skeeters to take bite out of dengue

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Jim Waymer,  Florida Today,  2026.
The Space Coast has unleashed 'nuked' skeeters in a new biological bid to neuter dengue fever. Last year, Brevard saw its first locally caught cases of the tropical disease and wound up with the most in Florida. In response, the county decided to let loose thousands of X-rayed ...

Wolbachia mosquito release cuts dengue cases 50–80 percent

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Mohamad Al As, Zaf Seraj,  New Straits Times,  2026.
The release of Wolbachia-infected Aedes mosquitoes has led to a 50 to 80 per cent drop in dengue cases in several outbreak areas in Selangor, the Dewan Rakyat was told. Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said public health studies conducted during the early phase of ...

Three Stunning Ways Biologists Aim to Edit Animal and Plant Genes to Fight Diseases and Extinction

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Sandy Ong,  Smithsonian Magazine,  2026.
In the summer of 1904, Herman Merkel, chief forester at the Bronx Zoo, in New York City, was making his usual rounds across the property when he noticed something strange growing on American chestnut trees: misshapen constellations of swollen, orange-brown cankers. Unbeknownst to ...

Color-coded mosquitoes safely enables male-only releases to combat Dengue and Zika

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Joshua Shavit,  The Brighter Side of News,  2026.
Across much of the world, a tiny striped insect shapes whether families stay healthy or get sick. The Asian tiger mosquito carries Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya, and traditional control efforts often struggle to keep up. A new genetic trick that literally changes how these ...

Scientists in Australia have created a genetically edited cane toad that gets stuck in the tadpole stage and attacks the plague before it spreads.

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Noel Budeguer,  Click Petróleo e Gás,  2026.
Australia has begun testing an unusual idea to combat one of the country's most persistent biological invasions: creating tadpoles of the cane toad who have never seen adults. The goal is to cut the problem off at the source, before the animals grow, leave the water, and move ...

Researchers Use Gene Editing to Separate Male and Female Mosquitoes

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ISAAA Inc.,  2026.
Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a new genetic method to separate male and female mosquitoes, which is highly beneficial for large-scale mosquito control programs. Led by Doron Zaada and Prof. Philippos Papathanos, the study aims to improve ...

Florida releases millions of genetically modified mosquitoes from Oxitec in the Florida Keys to try to reduce dengue and Zika by up to 95%, in a real-world experiment that divides residents and ushers in a new era of ecosystem editing.

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Carla Teles,  Click Petróleo e Gás,  2026.
In a quiet Florida neighborhood, things began with something that seemed mundane. Gray boxes started appearing in backyards and along the edges of mangrove swamps, accompanied by a simple instruction: fill with water and leave. Nobody saw anything special about them, just ...

Researchers develop temperature-controlled gene-editing method to potentially improve efforts to control disease-carrying insects

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Caliann Ferguson,  UT Health Houston School of Public Health,  2026.
New research presents promising results from an innovative technique that utilizes temperature control to genetically engineer sterile populations of insects, such as mosquitoes responsible for diseases like malaria, dengue, and other vector-borne illnesses. Led by researchers at ...

The ‘mosquito factory’ breeding genetically-engineered insects to fight malaria

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Rachel Schraer,  The Independent,  2025.
A British company breeding mosquitoes whose offspring cannot spread malaria is set to start releasing the insects into Djibouti city by the end of the year. Genetically-engineered male mosquitoes hatched in boxes placed around the East African capital will produce female babies ...

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