Keywords: fitness

Quantifying Fitness Costs in Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes

I. Sanchez-Vargas, A. E. Williams, L. E. Martin, I. Martin-Martin, S. Bennett, K. E. Olson and E. Calvo,  Journal of Visualized Experiments,  2023.
Transgenic mosquitoes often display fitness costs compared to their wild-type counterparts. In this regard, fitness cost studies involve collecting life parameter data from genetically modified mosquitoes and comparing them to mosquitoes lacking transgenes from the same genetic ...
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Evaluating the mating competency of genetically modified male mosquitoes in laboratory conditions

B. Contreras, Z. N. Adelman and K. Chae,  Frontiers in Tropical Diseases,  4. 2023.
Efforts to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases have increased the demand for genetic control strategies, many of which involve the release of genetically modified (GM) mosquito males into natural populations. The first hurdle for GM males is to compete with their wild-type ...
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Fitness costs of Wolbachia shift in locally-adapted Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

P. A. Ross and A. A. Hoffmann,  Environmental Microbiology,  2022.
Aedes aegypti mosquito eggs can remain quiescent for many months before hatching, allowing populations to persist through unfavorable conditions. Aedes aegypti infected with the Wolbachia strain wMel have been released in tropical and subtropical regions for dengue control. wMel ...
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Fitness effects of CRISPR endonucleases in Drosophila melanogaster populations

A. M. Langmüller, J. Champer, S. Lapinska, L. Xie, M. Metzloff, S. E. Champer, J. Liu, Y. Xu, J. Du, A. G. Clark and P. W. Messer,  eLife,  11:e71809. 2022.
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 provides a highly efficient and flexible genome editing technology with numerous potential applications ranging from gene therapy to population control. Some proposed applications involve the integration of ...
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Local adaptation of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to Wolbachia-induced fitness costs

P. A. Ross and A. A. Hoffmann,  bioRxiv,  2022.05.06.490959. 2022.
Aedes aegypti mosquito eggs can remain quiescent for many months before hatching, allowing populations to persist through unfavorable conditions. Aedes aegypti infected with the Wolbachia strain wMel have been released in tropical and subtropical regions for dengue control. wMel ...
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Mark-release-recapture experiment in Burkina Faso demonstrates reduced fitness and dispersal of genetically-modified sterile malaria mosquitoes

F. A. Yao, A.-A. Millogo, P. S. Epopa, A. North, F. Noulin, K. Dao, M. Drabo, C. Guissou, S. Kekele, M. Namountougou, R. K. Ouedraogo, L. Pare, N. Barry, R. Sanou, H. Wandaogo, R. K. Dabire, A. McKemey, F. Tripet and A. Diabaté,  Nature Communications,  13:796. 2022.
Every year, malaria kills approximately 405,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa, most of them children under the age of five years. In many countries, progress in malaria control has been threatened by the rapid spread of resistance to antimalarial drugs and insecticides. Novel ...
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Lab-scale characterization and semi-field trials of Wolbachia Strain wAlbB in a Taiwan Wolbachia introgressed Ae. aegypti strain

W. L. Liu, H. Y. Yu, Y. X. Chen, B. Y. Chen, S. N. Leaw, C. H. Lin, M. P. Su, L. S. Tsai, Y. Chen, S. H. Shiao, Z. Y. Xi, A. C. C. Jang and C. H. Chen,  PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases,  16:24. 2022.
Author summaryPrior to open field release, new genetic approaches that interfere with mosquito abilities and reduce mosquito population density require progressive evaluation both in the laboratory and contained field trials. Trials in contained outdoor systems are thus an ...
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Beyond the eye: Kynurenine pathway impairment causes midgut homeostasis dysfunction and survival and reproductive costs in blood-feeding mosquitoes

V. Bottino-Rojas, I. Ferreira, R. D. Nunes, X. Feng, T. B. Pham, A. Kelsey, R. Carballar-Lejarazú, V. Gantz, P. L. Oliveira and A. A. James,  Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,  103720. 2022.
Insect ommochrome biosynthesis pathways metabolize tryptophan to generate eye-color pigments and naturally occurring alleles of pathway genes are useful phenotypic markers in transgenesis studies. Pleiotropic effects of mutations in some genes exert a load on both survival and ...
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Effect of the timing of pupal irradiation on the quality and sterility of oriental fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) for use in Sterile Insect Technique

T. J. Fezza, P. A. Follett and T. E. Shelly,  Applied Entomology and Zoology,  8. 2021.
The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a target-specific, biologically based method used to control pestiferous tephritids entailing the release of mass-reared, sterilized males of the target species to achieve sterile male x wild female matings. As documented for several ...
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Gene-drive-mediated extinction is thwarted by population structure and evolution of sib mating

J. J. Bull, C. H. Remien and S. M. Krone,  Evolution Medicine and Public Health,  2019:66-81. 2019.
Genetic engineering combined with CRISPR technology has developed to the point that gene drives can, in theory, be engineered to cause extinction in countless species. Success of extinction programs now rests on the possibility of resistance evolution, which is largely unknown. ...
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Controlling invasive rodents via synthetic gene drive and the role of polyandry

Manser, AC, S. J.; Sutter, A.; Blondel, D. V.; Serr, M.; Godwin, J.; Price, T. A. R.,  Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences,  286:9. 2019.
House mice are a major ecosystem pest, particularly threatening island ecosystems as a non-native invasive species. Rapid advances in synthetic biology offer new avenues to control pest species for biodiversity conservation. Recently, a synthetic sperm-killing gene drive ...
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The Trojan Female Technique for pest control: a candidate mitochondrial mutation confers low male fertility across diverse nuclear backgrounds in Drosophila melanogaster

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, ...
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