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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Concept and history of genetic control

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Scott, M. J. and Benedict, M. Q.,  Genetic Control of Malaria and Dengue,  2:31-54. 2016.
Genetic control of insects is an established method, mainly for insects that are important crop and veterinary pests such as medflies and screwworm. Efforts to use the same technologies against insects of medical importance, especially mosquitoes, have had limited success. The ...

National Academies hit the brakes on gene drive-modified organisms

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Abbasi, J.,  JAMA-Journal of the American Medical Association,  316:482-483. 2016.
Despite their potential for fighting Zika, malaria, and other public health scourges, organisms that have been engineered to quickly spread genetic modifications through a population—and possibly an entire species—are not ready for release into the wild, a committee of ...

Invertebrate Biosecurity Challenges in High-Productivity Grassland: The New Zealand Example

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S. L. Goldson, B. I. P. Barratt and K. F. Armstrong,  Frontiers in Plant Science,  7. 2016.
This review explores the unique challenges faced by pasture biosecurity and what may be done to confront existing difficulties. While there is no silver bullet, and limited opportunity pre and at for improving pasture biosecurity, advancement may include increased and informed ...

Mitonuclear interactions, mtDNA-mediated thermal plasticity, and implications for the Trojan Female Technique for pest control

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J. N. Wolff, D. M. Tompkins, N. J. Gemmell and D. K. Dowling,  Scientific Reports,  6. 2016.
Here we test whether the male-sterilizing effects previously associated with the mt: Cyt-b mutation are consistent across three thermal and three nuclear genomic contexts. The effects of this mutation were indeed moderated by the nuclear background and thermal environment, but ...

Prospects and challenges of CRISPR/Cas genome editing for the study and control of neglected vector-borne nematode diseases

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M. Zamanian and E. C. Andersen,  The FEBS Journal,  283:3204-3221. 2016.
Neglected tropical diseases caused by parasitic nematodes inflict an immense health and socioeconomic burden throughout much of the developing world. Current estimates indicate that more than two billion people are infected with nematodes, resulting in the loss of 14 million ...

Lethal Gene Drive Selects Inbreeding

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J. J. Bull,  bioRxiv,  046847. 2016.
ere, population genetic models are used to consider the evolution of inbreeding (specifically selfing) as a possible response to a recessively lethal HEG with complete segregation distortion. Numerical analyses indicate a rich set of outcomes, but selfing often evolves in ...

Mating competitiveness of sterile genetic sexing strain males (GAMA) under laboratory and semi-field conditions: Steps towards the use of the Sterile Insect Technique to control the major malaria vector Anopheles arabiensis in South Africa

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G. Munhenga, B. D. Brooke, J. R. L. Gilles, K. Slabbert, A. Kemp, L. C. Dandalo, O. R. Wood, L. N. Lobb, D. Govender, M. Renke and L. L. Koekemoer,  Parasites and Vectors,  9:122. 2016.
Anopheles arabiensis Patton is primarily responsible for malaria transmission in South Africa after successful suppression of other major vector species using indoor spraying of residual insecticides. Control of An. arabiensis using current insecticide based approaches is proving ...

Engineering the wild: Gene drives and intergenerational equity

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J. Kuzma and L. Rawls,  Jurimetrics,  56:279-296. 2016.
New genetic engineering methods are allowing scientists to insert genes into organisms that have the potential to spread themselves throughout natural populations upon the release of individuals carrying those genes. Gene drive technology is being researched and developed for ...

Cheating evolution: engineering gene drives to manipulate the fate of wild populations

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Champer, JB, A.; Akbari, O. S.,  Nature Reviews Genetics,  17:146-159. 2016.
Engineered gene drives - the process of stimulating the biased inheritance of specific genes - have the potential to enable the spread of desirable genes throughout wild populations or to suppress harmful species, and may be particularly useful for the control of vector-borne ...

No evidence for female discrimination against male house mice carrying a selfish genetic element

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Sutter, AL, A. K.,  Current Zoology,  62:675-685. 2016.
Meiotic drivers distort transmission to the next generation in their favor, with detrimental effects on the fitness of their homologues and the rest of the genome. Male carriers of meiotic drivers commonly inflict costs on their mates through genetic incompatibility, reduced ...

Genome editing: intellectual property and product development in plant biotechnology

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Schinkel, HS, S.,  Plant Cell Reports,  35:1487-1491. 2016.
Genome editing is a revolutionary technology in molecular biology. While scientists are fascinated with the unlimited possibilities provided by directed and controlled changes in DNA in eukaryotes and have eagerly adopted such tools for their own experiments, an understanding of ...

Marcus Rhoades on preferential segregation in maize

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Birchler, JA,  Genetics,  203:1489-1490. 2016.
Rhoades was studying a variant form of chromosome 10 with a conspicuous abnormality; it carried extensive heterochromatin at the tip of the long arm. This variant had been found by Albert Longley in indigenous maize varieties from the southwestern United States and provided to ...

Gene drive through a landscape: Reaction-diffusion models of population suppression and elimination by a sex ratio distorter

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Beaghton, AB, P. J.; Burt, A.,  Theoretical Population Biology,  108:51-69. 2016.
Some genes or gene complexes are transmitted from parents to offsprihg at a greater-than-Mendelian rate, and can spread and persist in populations even if they cause some harm to the individuals carrying them. Such genes may be useful for controlling populations or species that ...

Random and non-random mating populations: Evolutionary dynamics in meiotic drive

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Sarkar, B,  Mathematical Biosciences,  271:29-41. 2016.
Game theoretic tools are utilized to analyze a one-locus continuous selection model of sex-specific meiotic drive by considering nonequivalence of the viabilities of reciprocal heterozygotes that might be noticed at an imprinted locus. The model draws attention to the role of ...

Sexual antagonism and meiotic drive cause stable linkage disequilibrium and favour reduced recombination on the X chromosome

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Rydzewski, WTC, S. A.; Lievano, G.; Lynch, V. D.; Patten, M. M.,  Journal of Evolutionary Biology,  29:1247-1256. 2016.
Sexual antagonism and meiotic drive are sex-specific evolutionary forces with the potential to shape genomic architecture. Previous theory has found that pairing two sexually antagonistic loci or combining sexual antagonism with meiotic drive at linked autosomal loci augments ...

Target Malaria has a killer in its sights: Eliminating the world’s deadliest disease has been a priority for decades, and, thanks to innovative gene-drive technology, Target Malaria is getting closer to achieving that goal

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Banks, J,  IEEE Pulse,  7:30-33. 2016.
The mosquito is the deadliest animal in the world (Figure 1). It is the main carrier of parasites that cause malaria, which is a bigger killer than any other disease in history; in fact, some blame malaria for the deaths of half the humans who have ever lived. Today, malaria ...

Genetic engineering to eradicate invasive mice on islands: modeling the efficiency and ecological impacts

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Backus, GAG, K.,  Ecosphere,  7:e01589. 2016.
Invasive rodents are usually eradicated from islands through the application of chemical toxicants that can harm surrounding ecosystems. A recently proposed alternative involves engineering a house mouse (Mus musculus) to carry a genetic construct that would cause a majority of ...

Intragenomic conflict produces sex ratio dynamics that favor maternal sex ratio distorters

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Rood, ESF, S.,  Ecology and Evolution,  6:8085-8093. 2016.
Maternal sex ratio distorters (MSDs) are selfish elements that enhance their transmission by biasing their host's sex allocation in favor of females. While previous models have predicted that the female-biased populations resulting from sex ratio distortion can benefit from ...

A meiotic drive element in the maize pathogen Fusarium verticillioides is located within a 102 kb region of chromosome V

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Pyle, JP, T.; Merrill, B.; Nsokoshi, C.; McCall, M.; Proctor, R. H.; Brown, D. W.; Hammond, T. M.,  G3-Genes Genomes Genetics,  6:2543-2552. 2016.
Fusarium verticillioides is an agriculturally important fungus because of its association with maize and its propensity to contaminate grain with toxic compounds. Some isolates of the fungus harbor a meiotic drive element known as Spore killer (Sk(K)) that causes nearly all ...

Selfish genetic elements and the gene’s-eye view of evolution

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Ågren, JA,  Current Zoology,  62:659-665. 2016.
During the last few decades, we have seen an explosion in the influx of details about the biology of selfish genetic elements. Ever since the early days of the field, the gene’s-eye view of Richard Dawkins, George Williams, and others, has been instrumental to make sense of new ...

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