Scholarly Literature
This is a database of scholarly literature that concentrates currently on natural and engineered selfish genetic elements (gene drives). The latest are shown here.
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Gene drive to reduce malaria transmission in sub-Saharan Africa
Tags: Gene drive synthetic, Genetics, Malaria, Mosquitoes, Other arthropods, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Toxin-antidote, Transmission distortion, X chromosome, Y-chromosomeBurt, AC, Mamadou; Crisanti, Andrea; Diabate, Abdoulaye; Kayondo, Jonathan K., Journal of Responsible Innovation, 5:S66-S80. 2018.
Despite impressive progress, malaria continues to impose a substantial burden of mortality and morbidity, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and new tools will be needed to achieve elimination. Gene drive is a natural process by which some genes are inherited at a ...
Safe Driving: CRISPR and the Gene Drive Landscape
Tags: Gene drive syntheticNolan, T, CRISPR Journal, 1:16-18. 2018.
A New Study Highlights Issues About the Capability to Limit Gene Drives in the Field to a Target Population
Using gene drive technologies to control vector-borne infectious diseases
Tags: Risk and safetyJames, ST, K. H., Sustainability, 10:4789. 2018.
After years of success in reducing the global malaria burden, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported that progress has stalled. Over 90% of malaria deaths world-wide occurred in the WHO African Region. New tools are needed to regain momentum and further decrease ...
Current CRISPR gene drive systems are likely to be highly invasive in wild populations
Tags: CRISPR, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Risk and safetyNoble, CA, Ben; Church, George M.; Esvelt, Kevin M.; Nowak, Martin A., eLife, 7:e33423. 2018.
Recent reports have suggested that self-propagating CRISPR-based gene drive systems are unlikely to efficiently invade wild populations due to drive-resistant alleles that prevent cutting. Here we develop mathematical models based on existing empirical data to explicitly test ...
Means and ends of effective global risk assessments for genetic pest management
Tags: Ethics, Gene drive synthetic, Policy, Regulation, Risk and safetyTurner, GB, Camilla; Roda, Lucia, BMC Proceedings, 12:13. 2018.
The development and use of genetic technologies is regulated by countries according to their national laws and governance structures. Legal frameworks require comprehensive technical evidence to be submitted by an applicant on the biology of the organism, its safety to human, ...
Pathway to deployment of gene drive mosquitoes as a potential biocontrol tool for elimination of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa: Recommendations of a scientific working group
Tags: Gene drive synthetic, Other arthropods, Risk and safetyJames, SC, Frank H.; Welkhoff, Philip A.; Emerson, Claudia; Godfray, H. Charles J.; Gottlieb, Michael; Greenwood, Brian; Lindsay, Steve W.; Mbogo, Charles M.; Okumu, Fredros O.; Quemada, Hector; Savadogo, Moussa; Singh, Jerome A.; Tountas, Karen H.; Touré, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 98:1-49. 2018.
Gene drive technology offers the promise for a high-impact, cost-effective, and durable method to control malaria transmission that would make a significant contribution to elimination. Gene drive systems, such as those based on clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic ...
Synthetically engineered Medea gene drive system in the worldwide crop pest Drosophila suzukii
Tags: Evolution, Gene drive synthetic, Other arthropods, Toxin-antidoteBuchman, AM, John M.; Ostrovski, Dennis; Yang, Ting; Akbari, Omar S., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115:4725-4730. 2018.
Here we describe a fully functional gene drive system constructed in a major worldwide crop pest, Drosophila suzukii. This system is composed of a synthetic Medea drive with a maternal miRNA “toxin” and a zygotic “antidote,” and we demonstrate that it can bias inheritance ...
Development of community of practice to support quantitative risk assessment for synthetic biology products: contaminant bioremediation and invasive carp control as cases
Tags: Ethics, Policy, Regulation, Risk and safetyTrump, BF, C.; Rycroft, T.; Wood, M. D.; Bandolin, N.; Cains, M.; Cary, T.; Crocker, F.; Friedenberg, N. A.; Gurian, P.; Hamilton, K.; Hoover, J.J.; Meyer, C.; Pokrzywinski, K.; Ritterson, R.; Schulte, P.; Warner, C. ; Perkins, E.; Linkov, I., Environmental Systems and Decisions, 38:517-527. 2018.
Synthetic biology has the potential for a broad array of applications. However, realization of this potential is challenged by the paucity of relevant data for conventional risk assessment protocols, a limitation due to to the relative nascence of the field, as well as the poorly ...
Engineered Reciprocal Chromosome Translocations Drive High Threshold, Reversible Population Replacement in Drosophila
Tags: Dengue, Gene drive, Gene drive mechanisms, Gene drive synthetic, Malaria, Other arthropods, Selfish genetic elements, Underdominance, Vector controlBuchman, ABI, Tobin; Marshall, John M.; Akbari, Omar S.; Hay, Bruce A., ACS Synthetic Biology, 7:1359-1370. 2018.
Replacement of wild insect populations with transgene-bearing individuals unable to transmit disease or survive under specific environmental conditions using gene drive provides a self-perpetuating method of disease prevention. Mechanisms that require the gene drive element and ...
Population seasonality and release timing significantly affect the probability of establishment for small releases of gene drive mosquitoes
Tags: Ecology, Gene drive synthetic, MosquitoesNikolov, MO, A. L.; Beaghton, A. K.; Beaghton, P. J.; Wenger, E. A.; Burt, A.; Welkhoff, P. A., American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 99:367-367. 2018.
Highly efficient CRISPR/Cas9 gene-drive systems have recently been developed, targeting reproductive-capacity and malaria-competency loci of malaria transmitting vector species, such as An. gambiae. The resulting drive systems aim to either suppress the local wild-type population ...
The impact of releasing sterile mosquitoes on malaria transmission
Tags: MalariaHongyan, YC, Yang; Xin'an, Zhang; Jia, Li, Discrete & Continuous Dynamical Systems - B, 23:3837-3853. 2018.
The sterile mosquitoes technique in which sterile mosquitoes are released to reduce or eradicate the wild mosquito population has been used in preventing the malaria transmission. To study the impact of releasing sterile mosquitoes on the malaria transmission, we first formulate ...
Developing standard operating procedures for gene drive research in disease vector mosquitoes
Tags: Containment, Gene drive synthetic, Regulation, Risk and safetyZ. N. Adelman, D. Pledger and K. M. Myles, Pathogens and Global Health, 111:436-447. 2018.
Here we discuss information to be considered by principal investigators, biosafety officers, and institutional biosafety committees as they work together to develop SOPs for experiments involving gene drive in arthropods, and describe various courses of action that can be used ...
Engineered integrative and conjugative elements for efficient and inducible DNA transfer to undomesticated bacteria
Tags: Ecology, Gene drive mechanisms, Gene drive synthetic, Other SymbiontsBrophy, JANT, Alexander J.; Adams, Bryn L.; Renberg, Rebecca L.; Stratis-Cullum, Dimitra N.; Grossman, Alan D.; Voigt, Christopher A., Nature Microbiology, 3:1043-1053. 2018.
Engineering microorganisms to promote human or plant health will require manipulation of robust bacteria that are capable of surviving in harsh, competitive environments. Genetic engineering of undomesticated bacteria can be limited by an inability to transfer DNA into the cell. ...
Evaluating active genetic options for the control of Sea Lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) in the Laurentian Great Lakes
Tags: Biodiversity/Conservation, Ecology, Fish, Gene drive mechanisms, Gene drive syntheticThresher, REJ, Michael; Drake, D. Andrew, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 76:1186-1202. 2018.
For more than two decades the Great Lakes Fishery Commission has sought tactics to complement, and potentially replace, the use of barriers and lampricides to control Sea Lamprey in the Great Lakes, but thus far without success. This paper examines the potential of modern genetic ...
Gene drive systems: Do they have a place in agricultural weed management?
Tags: Agriculture, CRISPR, Gene drive, Gene drive syntheticNeve, P, Pest Management Science, 74:2672-2679. 2018.
There is a pressing need for novel control techniques in agricultural weed management. Direct genetic control of agricultural pests encompasses a range of techniques to introduce and spread novel, fitness-reducing genetic modifications through pest populations. Recently, the ...
Identifying and detecting potentially adverse ecological outcomes associated with the release of gene-drive modified organisms
Tags: Agriculture, CRISPR, Ecology, Field trials, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Malaria, Mosquitoes, Risk and safety, Risk assessment, Stakeholder engagement, Transmission distortionHayes, KRH, G. R.; Dana, G. V.; Foster, S. D.; Ford, J. H.; Thresher, R.; Ickowicz, A.; Peel, D.; Tizard, M.; De Barro, P.; Strive, T.; Dambacher, J. M., Journal of Responsible Innovation, 5:S139-S158. 2018.
Synthetic gene drives could provide new solutions to a range of old problems such as controlling vector-borne diseases, agricultural pests and invasive species. In this paper, we outline methods to identify hazards and detect potentially adverse ecological outcomes at the ...
Evolutionary genetics of cytoplasmic incompatibility genes cifA and cifB in prophage WO of Wolbachia
Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Gene drive mechanisms, Toxin-antidote, WolbachiaLindsey, A. R. I., D. W. Rice, S. R. Bordenstein, A. W. Brooks, S. R. Bordenstein and I. L. G. Newton, Genome Biology and Evolution, 10:434-451. 2018.
The bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia manipulates arthropod reproduction to facilitate its maternal spread through host populations. The most common manipulation is cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI): Wolbachia-infected males produce modified sperm that cause embryonic mortality, ...
Genetic villains: Killer meiotic drivers
Tags: Gene drive mechanisms, Genetic engineering, Selfish genetic elements, Toxin-antidote, Transmission distortionBravo Núñez, MAN, Nicole L.; Zanders, Sarah E., Trends in Genetics, 34:424-433. 2018.
Unbiased allele transmission into progeny is a fundamental genetic concept canonized as Mendel’s Law of Segregation. Not all alleles, however, abide by the law. Killer meiotic drivers are ultra-selfish DNA sequences that are transmitted into more than half (sometimes all) of ...
Rapid comeback of males: evolution of male-killer suppression in a green lacewing population
Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Genetic engineering, Other arthropods, Other Symbionts, Selfish genetic elements, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion, WolbachiaHayashi, MN, M.; Kageyama, D., Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 285:6. 2018.
Evolutionary theory predicts that the spread of cytoplasmic sex ratio distorters leads to the evolution of host nuclear suppressors, although there are extremely few empirical observations of this phenomenon. Here, we demonstrate that a nuclear suppressor of a cytoplasmic male ...
Simulating the effects of clumped egg laying on mosquito population dynamics in relation to gene-drive interventions
Tags: Ecology, Gene drive syntheticMorris, ALF, N.; Ghani, A., American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 99:279-280. 2018.
Gene-drive based vector control methods are a rapidly developing tool in the fight against malaria. They utilise highly targeted insertions of genes to express specific traits, such as biases in offspring sex ratio or inhibited vector competence, which are preferentially ...

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