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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The effect of malaria control on Plasmodium falciparum in Africa between 2000 and 2015

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S. Bhatt, D. J. Weiss, E. Cameron, D. Bisanzio, B. Mappin, U. Dalrymple, K. E. Battle, C. L. Moyes, A. Henry, P. A. Eckhoff, E. A. Wenger, O. Briët, M. A. Penny, T. A. Smith, A. Bennett, J. Yukich, T. P. Eisele, J. T. Griffin, C. A. Fergus, M. Lynch, F. L,  Nature,  526:207-211. 2015.
Since the year 2000, a concerted campaign against malaria has led to unprecedented levels of intervention coverage across sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding the effect of this control effort is vital to inform future control planning. H

The Trojan Female Technique for pest control: a candidate mitochondrial mutation confers low male fertility across diverse nuclear backgrounds in Drosophila melanogaster

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D. K. Dowling, D. M. Tompkins and N. J. Gemmell,  Evolutionary Applications,  8:8710880. 2015.
The Trojan Female Technique (TFT) was recently proposed as a prospective approach to biological pest control. However, applicability of the TFT relies on mitochondrial mutations whose male-sterilizing effects are general across nuclear genomic contexts. We test this assumption, ...

Back to the future: the sterile insect technique against mosquito disease vectors

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R. S. Lees, J. R. L. Gilles, J. Hendrichs, M. J. B. Vreysen and K. Bourtzis,  Current Opinion in Insect Science,  10:156-162. 2015.
With the global burden of mosquito-borne diseases increasing, and some conventional vector control tools losing effectiveness, the sterile insect technique (SIT) is a potential new tool in the arsenal. Equipment and protocols have been developed and validated for efficient ...

Ecological and evolutionary applications for environmental sex reversal of fish

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A. McNair, P. M. Lokman, G. P. Closs and S. Nakagawa,  Quarterly Review of Biology,  90:23-44. 2015.
Environmental sex reversal (ESR), which results in a mismatch between genotypic and phenotypic sex, is well documented in numerous fish species and may be induced by chemical exposure. Historically, research involving piscine ESR has been carried out with a view to improving ...

Gene drive turns mosquitoes into malaria fighters

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Pennisi, E,  Science,  350:1014-1014. 2015.
The war against malaria has a new ally: a controversial technology for spreading genes throughout a population of animals. In the laboratory, researchers have harnessed a so-called gene drive to efficiently endow mosquitoes with genes that make them immune to the malaria ...

Female house mice avoid fertilization by t haplotype incompatible males in a mate choice experiment

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Manser, AK, B.; Lindholm, A. K.,  Journal of Evolutionary Biology,  28:54-64. 2015.
The t haplotype in house mice is a well-known selfish genetic element with detrimental, nonadditive fitness consequences to its carriers: recessive lethal mutations cause t/t homozygotes to perish in utero. Given the severe genetic incompatibility imposed by the t haplotype, we ...

Can systematic reviews inform GMO risk assessment and risk management?

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Kohl, CF, G.; Sweet, J.; Spok, A.; Haddaway, N.R.; Wilhelm, R.; Unger, S.; Schiemann, J.,  Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology,  3:113. 2015.
Systematic reviews represent powerful tools to identify, collect, synthesize, and evaluate primary research data on specific research questions in a highly standardized and reproducible manner. They enable the defensible synthesis of outcomes by increasing precision and ...

A prezygotic transmission distorter acting equally in female and male zebra finches Taeniopygia guttata

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Knief, US, H.; Ellegren, H.; Kempenaers, B.; Forstmeier, W.,  Molecular Ecology,  24:3846-3859. 2015.
The two parental alleles at a specific locus are usually inherited with equal probability to the offspring. However, at least three processes can lead to an apparent departure from fair segregation: early viability selection, biased gene conversion and various kinds of ...

Double trouble: combined action of meiotic drive and Wolbachia feminization in Eurema butterflies

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Kern, PC, J. M.; Kageyama, D.; Riegler, M.,  Biology Letters,  11:20150095. 2015.
Arthropod sex ratios can be manipulated by a diverse range of selfish genetic elements, including maternally inherited Wolbachia bacteria. Feminization by Wolbachia is rare but has been described for Eurema mandarina butterflies. In this species, some phenotypic and functional ...

Coevolutionary dynamics of polyandry and sex-linked meiotic drive

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Holman, LP, T. A. R.; Wedell, N.; Kokko, H.,  Evolution,  69:709-720. 2015.
Segregation distorters located on sex chromosomes are predicted to sweep to fixation and cause extinction via a shortage of one sex, but in nature they are often found at low, stable frequencies. One potential resolution to this longstanding puzzle involves female multiple mating ...

Sex chromosome drive

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Helleu, QG, P. R.; Montchamp-Moreau, C.,  Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology,  7:a017616. 2015.
Sex chromosome drivers are selfish elements that subvert Mendel's first law of segregation and therefore are over represented among the products of meiosis. The sex-biased progeny produced then fuels an extended genetic conflict between the driver and the rest of the genome. Many ...

Mating type and spore killing characterization of Fusarium verticillioides strains

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Guo, LB, A. Z.; Geiser, D. M.; Jimenez-Gasco, M. D.; Kuldau, G. A.,  Mycological Progress,  14:1045. 2015.
Fusarium verticillioides is a heterothallic ascomycete causing maize ear rot, and produces fumonisin mycotoxins harmful to livestock and human health. A meiotic drive phenomenon called spore killing has been reported in several filamentous fungi including F. verticillioides. F. ...

Highly efficient Cas9-mediated gene drive for population modification of the malaria vector mosquito Anopheles stephensi

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Gantz, VMJ, N.; Tatarenkova, O.; Fazekas, A.; Macias, V. M.; Bier, E.; James, A. A.,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,  112:e6736-e6743. 2015.
Genetic engineering technologies can be used both to create transgenic mosquitoes carrying antipathogen effector genes targeting human malaria parasites and to generate gene-drive systems capable of introgressing the genes throughout wild vector populations. We developed a highly ...

The mutagenic chain reaction: A method for converting heterozygous to homozygous mutations

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V. M. Gantz and E. Bier,  Science,  348:442. 2015.
Loss-of-function mutations may only produce a mutant phenotype when both copies of the gene are mutated. Gantz and Bier developed a method they call mutagenic chain reaction (MCR) that autocatalytically produces homozygous mutations. MCR uses the initial mutated allele to cause a ...

Centromere-associated meiotic drive and female fitness variation in Mimulus

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Fishman, LK, J. K.,  Evolution,  69:1208-1218. 2015.
Female meiotic drive, in which chromosomal variants preferentially segregate to the egg pole during asymmetric female meiosis, is a theoretically pervasive but still mysterious form of selfish evolution. Like other selfish genetic elements, driving chromosomes may be maintained ...

Sex ratio meiotic drive as a plausible evolutionary mechanism for hybrid male sterility

Zhang, LBS, T. N.; Woldesellassie, F.; Xiao, H. L.; Tao, Y.,  PLOS Genetics,  11:e1005073. 2015.
Biological diversity on Earth depends on the multiplication of species or speciation, which is the evolution of reproductive isolation such as hybrid sterility between two new species. An unsolved puzzle is the exact mechanism(s) that causes two genomes to diverge from their ...

Duplication and adaptive evolution of a key centromeric protein in Mimulus, a genus with female meiotic drive

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Finseth, FRD, Y. Z.; Saunders, A.; Fishman, L.,  Molecular Biology and Evolution,  32:2694-2706. 2015.
The fundamental asymmetry of female meiosis creates an arena for genetic elements to compete for inclusion in the egg, promoting the selfish evolution of centromere variants that maximize their transmission to the future egg. Such "female meiotic drive" has been hypothesized to ...

R2d2 and hyperdrive mechanisms (in Mouse meiosis)

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Zanders, SEM, H. S.,  PLOS Genetics,  11:1-4. 2015.
Mendelian transmission is established during meiosis, the cell division that generates haploidgametes (e.g., sperm and eggs) from diploid germ cells. Meiosis does not, however, have to befair. Selfish genetic elements, or meiotic drivers, have evolved to cheat this process in ...

Opinion: Is CRISPR-based gene drive a biocontrol silver bullet or global conservation threat?

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Webber, BLR, S.; Edwards, O. R.,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,  112:10565-10567. 2015.
Scientists have recognized the potential for applying gene drive technologies to the control of invasive species for several years, yet debate about the application of gene drive has been primarily restricted to mosquitoes. Recent developments in clustered regularly interspaced ...

Safeguarding CRISPR-Cas9 gene drives in yeast

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DiCarlo, JEC, A.; Dietz, S. L.; Esvelt, K. M.; Church, G. M.,  Nature Biotechnology,  33:1250-1255. 2015.
RNA-guided gene drives capable of spreading genomic alterations made in laboratory organisms through wild populations could be used to address environmental and public health problems. However, the possibility of unintended genome editing occurring through the escape of strains ...

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