Fruit fly Archives • GeneConvene Virtual Institute

Keywords: Fruit fly

Dissecting The Sterility Phenotype Of Drosophila Suzukii Males

Tags: Fruit fly, Pest management, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Evrim Ağacı, The Pinnacle Gazette, 2025.
Groundbreaking findings on gene-edited males provide insights for pest management strategies. Researchers have made significant strides in controlling the invasive fruit pest Drosophila suzukii, commonly known as the spotted wing drosophila, utilizing innovative genetic ...

Selfish Genetic Elements and Meiotic Drive in Drosophila

Tags: Fruit fly, Selfish genetic elements, Sex distorter
Nature Research Intelligence, 2025.
Selfish genetic elements are segments of DNA that can enhance their own transmission to the next generation, often at a cost to the organism's overall fitness. In Drosophila, or fruit flies, these elements can lead to a phenomenon known as meiotic drive, where certain alleles are ...

Genetically Engineered Male Insects Shorten Their Mates’ Lifespans

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Mosquito husbandry, Mosquitoes, Population suppression, Vector control
Sneha Khedkar, The Scientist, 2025.
On a still night, as the air is thick with silence, the sharp, whining buzz of a mosquito shatters the calm. These blood-sucking insects that disturb people’s deep slumber are also responsible for spreading diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, malaria and Zika fever, which ...

Escalation of genome defense capacity enables control of an expanding meiotic driver

Tags: Fruit fly, Population genetics/dynamics, Selfish genetic elements
P. Chen, K.C. Pan, E.H. Park, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122. 2025.
From RNA interference to chromatin silencing, diverse genome defense pathways silence selfish genetic elements to safeguard genome integrity. Despite their diversity, different defense pathways share a modular organization, where numerous specificity factors identify diverse ...

Meiotic Drive and Speciation

Tags: Fruit fly, Rodents, Sex distorter, X chromosome, Y-chromosome
Jeremy B. Searle and Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena, Annual Review of Genetics, 58:341-363. 2024.
Meiotic drive is the biased transmission of alleles from heterozygotes, contrary to Mendel's laws, and reflects intragenomic conflict rather than organism-level Darwinian selection. Theory has been developed as to how centromeric properties can promote female meiotic drive and ...

The Meiotic Drive: Intragenomic Competition and Selection

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Fruit fly, Genetics, Rodents, Yeast and Fungi
I. A. Zakharov, Russian Journal of Genetics, 60:1311-1318. 2024.
The article considers the distribution and mechanisms of the meiotic drive as a phenomenon manifested in unequal transmission of gene alleles and/or homologous chromosomes into gametes during meiosis. The meiotic drive has been studied in the most detail in Drosophila, mice, ...

Biotechnology-enhanced genetic controls of the global pest Drosophila suzukii

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Pest management, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Ying Yan, Hassan M.M. Ahmed, Ernst A. Wimmer, et al., Trends in Biotechnology, 2024.
Genetic control is a biological control method that introduces traits that sterilize, kill, or modify the population via intraspecific mating. Therefore, it is regarded as a species-specific and environmentally friendly management option for pest species. Spotted wing ...

Improving the suppressive power of homing gene drive by co-targeting a distant-site female fertility gene

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Genetic engineering, Modeling
Faber, N.R., Xu, X., Chen, J. et al., Nature Communications, 15. 2024.
Gene drive technology has the potential to address major biological challenges. Well-studied homing suppression drives have been shown to be highly efficient in Anopheles mosquitoes, but for other organisms, lower rates of drive conversion prevent elimination of the target ...

Pest control gets the CRISPR treatment

Tags: Ecology, Fruit fly, Pest management, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Seydel, C., Nature Biotechnology, 2024.
In June 2024, the St. Louis–based pest control company Agragene released genetically modified fruit flies on berry farms in California and Oregon, moving the technology out of the laboratory and into contained field testing. The trial marked a milestone for a next-generation ...

Fluorescent-based sex-separation technique in major invasive crop pest, Drosophila suzukii

Tags: Fruit fly, Invasive species, Pest management, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Junru Liu, Danny Rayes, Minzhe Yang, Omar S. Akbari, bioRxiv, 2024.
Insect population biocontrol methods such as the sterile insect technique (SIT), represent promising alternatives to traditional pesticide-based control applications. To use these strategies efficiently requires scalable sex separation techniques which are currently lacking in ...

Exploration of the potential of a boosted sterile insect technique to control fruit flies in mango orchards

Tags: Biological control, Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Esther Gnilane Diouf, Thierry Brévault, Saliou Ndiaye, Cyril Piou, Pest Management Science, 2024.
An innovative version of the sterile insect technique (SIT) for pest control, called boosted SIT, relies on the use of sterile males coated with a biocide to control a target wild pest population of the same species. The objective of the present study was to assess the relevance ...

Transformation of meiotic drive into hybrid sterility in Drosophila

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic incompatibilities, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
Jackson Bladen, Hyuck-Jin Nam, Nitin Phadnis, bioRxiv, 2024.
Hybrid male sterility is one of the fastest evolving intrinsic reproductive barriers between recently isolated populations. A leading explanation for the evolution of hybrid male sterility involves genomic conflicts with meiotic drivers in the male germline. There are, however, ...

Comparative analysis of Wolbachia maternal transmission and localization in host ovaries

Tags: Fruit fly, Other Symbionts, Wolbachia
Michael T.J. Hague, Timothy B. Wheeler, Brandon S. Cooper, bioRxiv, 2024.

Acetylcholine esterase of Drosophila melanogaster: a laboratory model to explore insecticide susceptibility gene drives

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive
Hernandes, N., Qi, X.M., Bhide, S., Brown, C., Camm, B.J., Baxter, S.W. and Robin, C., Pest Management Science, 2024.
One of the proposed applications of gene drives has been to revert pesticide resistant mutations back to the ancestral susceptible state. Insecticides that have become ineffective because of the rise of resistance could have reinvigorated utility and be used to suppress pest ...

Deep orange gene editing triggers temperature-sensitive lethal phenotypes in Ceratitis capitata

Tags: Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Sollazzo, G., Nikolouli, K., Gouvi, G. et al., BMC Biotechnology, 24. 2024.
The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata, is a significant agricultural pest managed through area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) including a sterile insect technique (SIT) component. Male-only releases increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of SIT ...

Revolutionary Gene Drive Could Provide Solution for Agricultural Pest Control

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Pest management
María Alejandra Trujillo, Breaking News Network, 2024.
The crux of the gene drive hinges on the process of sex determination in medflies. The drive effectively converts genetic females into fertile XX males, which, unlike their female counterparts, are harmless to crops. This innovative approach presents a possibility for a more ...

Gene driver flies and quantum finance: News from Imperial

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Malaria, Mosquitoes
Bryony Ravate, Hayley Dunning, Imperial College London, 2024.
Researchers have created the first gene drive for the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), a global agricultural pest affecting food production. The team was led by Dr Nikolai Windbichler and Dr Angela Meccariello at Imperial's Department of Life Sciences, and included ...

The haplolethal gene wupA of Drosophila exhibits potential as a target for an X-poisoning gene drive

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Population suppression, Sex distorter, X chromosome
Clancy D. Lawler, Ana Karla Parra Nuñez, Natalia Hernandes, Soumitra Bhide, Isabelle Lohrey, Simon Baxter, Charles Robin, bioRxiv, 2024.
A synthetic gene drive that targets haplolethal genes on the X-chromosome can skew the sex ratio towards males. Like an ‘X-shredder’ it does not involve ‘homing’ and that has advantages including the reduction of gene drive resistance allele formation. We examine this ...

Wolbachia infection negatively impacts Drosophila simulans heat tolerance in a strain- and trait-specific manner

Tags: Fruit fly, Wolbachia
Liam F Ferguson, Perran A Ross, Belinda van Heerwaarden, bioRxiv, 2023.
The susceptibility of insects to rising temperatures has largely been measured by their ability to survive thermal extremes. However, until recently, the capacity for maternally inherited endosymbionts to influence insect heat tolerance has been overlooked. Further, the impact of ...

Population suppression with dominant female-lethal alleles is boosted by homing gene drive

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Modeling, Pest management, Population suppression, Sterile insect technique (SIT), Synthetic biology
Jinyu Zhu, Jingheng Chen, Yiran Liu, Xuejiao Xu, Jackson Champer, bioRxiv, 2023.
Methods to suppress pest insect populations using genetic constructs and repeated releases of male homozygotes have recently been shown to be an attractive alternative to older sterile insect technique based on radiation. Female-specific lethal alleles have substantially ...

Food for thought: Assessing the consumer welfare impacts of deploying irreversible, landscape-scale biotechnologies

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive
Michael S. Jones, Zachary S. Brown, Food Policy, 121. 2023.
Genetically engineered insects have gained attention as regionally deployed pest control technologies, with substantial applications in agriculture for combatting intractable crop pests and diseases. One potential tool is a ‘gene drive’, using CRISPR-based gene editing. In ...

Use of Drosophila Transgenics to Identify Functions for Symbiont Effectors

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene editing, Wolbachia
Cortez, C.T., Murphy, R.O., Owens, I.M., Beckmann, J.F., Methods in Molecular Biology, 2739. 2023.
Wolbachia, one of the most successful and studied insect symbionts, and Drosophila, one of the most understood model insects, can be exploited as complementary tools to unravel mechanisms of insect symbiosis. Although Wolbachia itself cannot be grown axenically as clonal isolates ...

Wolbachia endosymbionts manipulate the self-renewal and differentiation of germline stem cells to reinforce fertility of their fruit fly host

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
S. L. Russell, J. R. Castillo and W. T. Sullivan, PLOS Biology, 21:e3002335. 2023.
The alphaproteobacterium Wolbachia pipientis infects arthropod and nematode species worldwide, making it a key target for host biological control. Wolbachia-driven host reproductive manipulations, such as cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), are credited for catapulting these ...

How mosquito-controlling bacteria might also enhance insect fertility

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
Public Library of Science, Phys Org, 2023.
A new study reveals biological mechanisms by which a specific strain of bacteria in the Wolbachia genus might enhance the fertility of the insects it infects—with potentially important implications for mosquito-control strategies. Shelbi Russell of the University of California ...

Wolbachia enhances the survival ofDrosophila infected with fungal pathogens

Tags: Fruit fly, Mosquitoes, Population modification/replacement, Wolbachia
J. Perlmutter, I., A. Atadurdyyeva, M. Schedl, E. and R. Unckless, L., bioRxiv, 2023.09.30.560320. 2023.
Wolbachia bacteria of arthropods are at the forefront of basic and translational research on multipartite host-symbiont-pathogen interactions. These microbes are vertically inherited from mother to offspring via the cytoplasm. They are the most widespread endosymbionts on the ...

Next-generation genetic sexing strain establishment in the agricultural pest Ceratitis capitata

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetically modified organisms, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
S. Davydova, J. Liu, N. Kandul, P., W. E. Braswell, O. Akbari, S. and A. Meccariello, bioRxiv, 2023.09.29.560088. 2023.
Tephritid fruit fly pests pose an increasing threat to the agricultural industry due to their global dispersion and a highly invasive nature. Here we showcase the feasibility of an early-detection SEPARATOR sex sorting approach through using the non-model Tephritid pest, ...

Testing a candidate meiotic drive locus identified by pool sequencing

Tags: Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
D. A. Barbash, B. Jin, K. H. C. Wei and A.-M. Dion-Côté, G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 2023.
Meiotic drive biases the transmission of alleles in heterozygous individuals, such that Mendel’s law of equal segregation is violated. Most examples of meiotic drive have been discovered over the past century based on causing sex-ratio distortion or the biased transmission of ...

Wolbachia Induces Structural Defects Harmful to Drosophila simulans Riverside Spermiogenesis.

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
M. G. Riparbelli, A. Pratelli and G. Callaini, Cells, 12. 2023.
The relationship between cytoplasmic incompatibility and the obligate intracellular alphaproteobacteria Wolbachia has for a long time been reported. Although the molecular mechanisms responsible for this reproductive alteration are beginning to be understood, the effects of ...

Female meiotic drive shapes the distribution of rare inversion polymorphisms in Drosophila melanogaster

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Modeling, Transmission distortion
S. A. Koury, Genetics, 2023.
In all species, new chromosomal inversions are constantly being formed by spontaneous rearrangement and then stochastically eliminated from natural populations. In Drosophila, when new chromosomal inversions overlap with a pre-existing inversion in the population, their rate of ...

Wolbachia has subtle effects on thermal preference in highly inbred Drosophila melanogaster which vary with life stage and environmental conditions

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Other Symbionts, Wolbachia
A. Strunov, C. Schoenherr and M. Kapun, Scientific Reports, 13:13792. 2023.
Temperature fluctuations are challenging for ectotherms which are not able to regulate body temperature by physiological means and thus have to adjust their thermal environment via behavior. However, little is yet known about whether microbial symbionts influence thermal ...

Effect of the Sterile Insect Technique and Augmentative Parasitoid Releases in a Fruit Fly Suppression Program in Mango-Producing Areas of Southeast Mexico

Tags: Biological control, Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
J. Cancino, P. Montoya, F. O. Gálvez, C. Gálvez and P. Liedo, Insects, 14. 2023.
The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), by means of sterile male releases of Anastrepha ludens (Loew), coupled with Augmentative Biological Control (ABC), by releasing the parasitoid Diachasmimorpha longicaudata (Ashmead), was evaluated in a commercial mango production area for one ...

Wolbachia infection at least partially rescues the fertility and ovary defects of several new Drosophila melanogaster bag of marbles protein-coding mutants

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
W. Miwa and F. A. Charles, bioRxiv, 2023.03.20.532813. 2023.
The D. melanogaster protein coding gene bag of marbles (bam) plays a key role in early male and female reproduction by forming complexes with partner proteins to promote differentiation in gametogenesis. Like another germline gene, Sex lethal, bam genetically interacts with the ...

Population suppression by release of insects carrying a dominant sterile homing gene drive targeting doublesex in Drosophila

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Modeling, Population suppression, Sex distorter, Sterile insect technique (SIT), Synthetic biology
C. Weizhe, G. Jialiang, L. Yiran and C. Jackson, bioRxiv, 2023.07.17.549342. 2023.
Gene drive alleles, which bias their own inheritance and increase in frequency, show great promise for blocking disease transmission or directly suppressing pest populations. The most common engineered drive system is the CRISPR homing drive, which converts wild-type alleles to ...

New germline Cas9 promoters show improved performance for homing gene drive

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Replicator/site directed nuclease
D. Jie, C. Weizhe, J. Xihua, X. Xuejiao, Y. Emily, Z. Ruizhi, Z. Yuqi, M. Matt, W. M. Philipp and C. Jackson, bioRxiv, 2023.07.16.549205. 2023.
Gene drive systems could be a viable strategy to prevent pathogen transmission or suppress vector populations by propagating drive alleles with super-Mendelian inheritance. CRISPR-based homing gene drives, perhaps the most powerful gene drive strategy, convert wild type alleles ...

The evolutionary history of Drosophila simulans Y chromosomes reveals molecular signatures of resistance to sex ratio meiotic drive

Tags: Fruit fly, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
C. Courret, D. Ogereau, C. Gilbert, A. M. Larracuente and C. Montchamp-Moreau, Mol Biol Evol, 2023.
The recent evolutionary history of the Y chromosome in Drosophila simulans, a worldwide species of Afrotropical origin, is closely linked to that of X-linked meiotic drivers (Paris system). The spread of the Paris drivers in natural populations has elicited the selection of drive ...

Scientists are Gene-Editing Flies to Fight Crop Damage

Tags: Agriculture, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Genetically modified organisms, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
E. Mullin, WIRED, 2023.
In greenhouses in Oregon last month, researchers with the US Department of Agriculture began testing one such approach: sterilized male flies. The gene-edited bugs, made by St. Louis–based biotech company Agragene, are meant to suppress wild fly populations. The idea is that if ...

Regulatory logic of endogenous RNAi in silencing de novo genomic conflicts

Tags: Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
J. Vedanayagam, C. J. Lin, R. Papareddy, M. Nodine, A. S. Flynt, J. Wen and E. C. Lai, PLOS Genetics, 19:e1010787. 2023.
Although the biological utilities of endogenous RNAi (endo-RNAi) have been largely elusive, recent studies reveal its critical role in the non-model fruitfly Drosophila simulans to suppress selfish genes, whose unchecked activities can severely impair spermatogenesis. In ...

CRISPR/Cas9-based split homing gene drive targeting doublesex for population suppression of the global fruit pest Drosophila suzukii

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Self limiting
A. K. Yadav, C. Butler, A. Yamamoto, A. A. Patil, A. L. Lloyd and M. J. Scott, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 120:e2301525120. 2023.
Genetic-based methods offer environmentally friendly species-specific approaches for control of insect pests. One method, CRISPR homing gene drive that target genes essential for development, could provide very efficient and cost-effective control. While significant progress has ...

To fight berry-busting fruit flies, researchers focus on sterilizing the bugs

Tags: Agriculture, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Self limiting
M. Walling, KTAL News.com, 2023.
Paul Nelson is used to doing battle with an invasive fruit fly called the spotted wing drosophila, a pest that one year ruined more than half the berries on the Minnesota farm he and his team run. In recent years, they’ve cut their losses closer to 5%, but it’s been ...

CRISPR/Cas9-based gene drive could suppress agricultural pests

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Population suppression, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Self limiting
North Carolina State University, Phys Org, 2023.
Researchers have developed a "homing gene drive system" based on CRISPR/Cas9 that could be used to suppress populations of Drosophila suzukii vinegar flies—so-called "spotted-wing Drosophila" that devastate soft-skinned fruit in North America, Europe and parts of South ...

How aggressive interactions with biomimetic agents optimize reproductive performances in mass-reared males of the Mediterranean fruit fly

Tags: Fruit fly, Mosquito husbandry, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
D. Romano, G. Benelli and C. Stefanini, Biological Cybernetics, 2023.
Mass-rearing procedures of insect species, often used in biological control and Sterile Insect Technique, can reduce the insects competitiveness in foraging, dispersal, and mating. The evocation of certain behaviours responsible to induce specific neuroendocrine products may ...

Essential and recurrent roles for hairpin RNAs in silencing de novo sex chromosome conflict in Drosophila simulans

Tags: Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
J. Vedanayagam, M. Herbette, H. Mudgett, C. J. Lin, C. M. Lai, C. McDonough-Goldstein, S. Dorus, B. Loppin, C. Meiklejohn, R. Dubruille and E. C. Lai, PLoS Biol, 21:e3002136. 2023.
Meiotic drive loci distort the normally equal segregation of alleles, which benefits their own transmission even in the face of severe fitness costs to their host organism. However, relatively little is known about the molecular identity of meiotic drivers, their strategies of ...

Cell biology: Selfish B chromosomes unleashed by a dysfunctional chromosome segregation system

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Fruit fly, Selfish genetic elements
P. Ferree, Current Biology, 33:R431-R434. 2023.
A study in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster shows that a defective chromosome segregation system allows non-essential B chromosomes to transmit at higher-than-Mendelian frequencies.

Wolbachia protects Drosophila melanogaster against two naturally occurring and virulent viral pathogens

Tags: Arbovirus, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
G. Bruner-Montero and F. M. Jiggins, Scientific Reports, 13:8518. 2023.
Wolbachia is a common endosymbiont that can protect insects against viral pathogens. However, whether the antiviral effects of Wolbachia have a significant effect on fitness remains unclear. We have investigated the interaction between Drosophila melanogaster, Wolbachia and two ...

Wolbachia genetically interacts with the bag of marbles germline stem cell gene in male D. melanogaster

Tags: Fruit fly, Wolbachia
M. Wenzel and C. F. Aquadro, MicroPubl Biol, 2023.
The bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia manipulates reproduction of its arthropod hosts to promote its own maternal vertical transmission. In female D. melanogaster , Wolbachia has been shown to genetically interact with three key reproductive genes ( bag of marbles ( bam ) , ...

Combined actions of bacteriophage-encoded genes in Wolbachia-induced male lethality

Tags: Fruit fly, Other Symbionts, Wolbachia
H. Arai, H. Anbutsu, Y. Nishikawa, M. Kogawa, K. Ishii, M. Hosokawa, S. R. Lin, M. Ueda, M. Nakai, Y. Kunimi, T. Harumoto, D. Kageyama, H. Takeyama and M. N. Inoue, iScience, 26:106842. 2023.
Some Wolbachia endosymbionts induce male killing, whereby male offspring of infected females are killed during development; however, the origin and diversity of the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we identified a 76 kbp prophage region specific to ...

B chromosomes reveal a female meiotic drive suppression system in Drosophila melanogaster

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Fruit fly
S. L. Hanlon and R. S. Hawley, Current Biology, 2023.
Selfish genetic elements use a myriad of mechanisms to drive their inheritance and ensure their survival into the next generation, often at a fitness cost to its host.(1)(,)(2) Although the catalog of selfish genetic elements is rapidly growing, our understanding of host drive ...

Additive Effect of Releasing Sterile Insects Plus Biocontrol Agents against Fruit Fly Pests (Diptera: Tephritidae) under Confined Conditions

Tags: Biological control, Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
P. Montoya, E. Flores-Sarmiento, P. López, A. Ayala and J. Cancino, Insects, 14. 2023.
Pest control models integrating the use of the sterile insect technique (SIT) and augmentative biological control (ABC) have postulated that it is possible to obtain a synergistic effect from the joint use of these technologies. This synergistic effect is attributed to the ...

The Wolbachia WalE1 effector alters Drosophila endocytosis

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
M. Martin and I. L. G. Newton, bioRxiv, 2023.
The most common intracellular bacterial infection is Wolbachia pipientis , a microbe that manipulates host reproduction and is used in control of insect vectors. Phenotypes induced by Wolbachia have been studied for decades and range from sperm-egg incompatibility to male ...

A male-killing Wolbachia endosymbiont is concealed by another endosymbiont and a nuclear suppressor

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Other Symbionts, Wolbachia
K. M. Richardson, P. A. Ross, B. S. Cooper, W. R. Conner, T. Schmidt and A. A. Hoffmann, PLoS Biol, 21:e3001879. 2023.
Bacteria that live inside the cells of insect hosts (endosymbionts) can alter the reproduction of their hosts, including the killing of male offspring (male killing, MK). MK has only been described in a few insects, but this may reflect challenges in detecting MK rather than its ...

Distinct Wolbachia localization patterns in oocytes of diverse host species reveal multiple strategies of maternal transmission

Tags: Fruit fly, Wolbachia
Y. A. Radousky, M. T. J. Hague, S. Fowler, E. Paneru, A. Codina, C. Rugamas, G. Hartzog, B. S. Cooper and W. Sullivan, Genetics, 2023.
A broad array of endosymbionts radiate through host populations via vertical transmission, yet much remains unknown concerning the cellular basis, diversity and routes underlying this transmission strategy. Here we address these issues, by examining the cellular distributions of ...

Assessing the hybridization potential between a hypothetical gene drive-modified Drosophila suzukii strain and non-target Drosophila species

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Risk and safety, Risk assessment
J. Romeis, S. Wolf, J. Collatz, J. Enkerli and F. Widmer, IOBC-WPRS Bulletin, 163:108. 2023.
Genetically engineered gene drives (GD) are a potentially powerful tool to control pest insects by population suppression or even elimination. Before living GD modified insects can be released into the environment, they must pass an environmental risk assessment (ERA). A key ...

A male-killing gene encoded by a symbiotic virus of Drosophila

Tags: Arbovirus, Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sex distorter
D. Kageyama, T. Harumoto, K. Nagamine, A. Fujiwara, T. N. Sugimoto, A. Jouraku, M. Tamura, T. K. Katoh and M. Watada, Nature Communications, 14:1357. 2023.
In most eukaryotes, biparentally inherited nuclear genomes and maternally inherited cytoplasmic genomes have different evolutionary interests. Strongly female-biased sex ratios that are repeatedly observed in various arthropods often result from the male-specific lethality ...

Genomic and cytogenetic analysis of the Ceratitis capitata temperature-sensitive lethal region

Tags: Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
G. Sollazzo, G. Gouvi, K. Nikolouli, R. A. Aumann, H. Djambazian, M. A. Whitehead, P. Berube, S.-H. Chen, G. Tsiamis, A. C. Darby, J. Ragoussis, M. F. Schetelig and K. Bourtzis, G3-Genes Genomes Genetics, 13. 2023.
Genetic sexing strains (GSS) are an important tool in support of sterile insect technique (SIT) applications against insect pests and disease vectors. The yet unknown temperature-sensitive lethal (tsl) gene and the recently identified white pupae (wp) gene have been used as ...

Effects of Wolbachia on Transposable Element Expression Vary Between Drosophila melanogaster Host Genotypes

Tags: Fruit fly, Selfish genetic elements, Wolbachia
A. T. Eugénio, M. S. P. Marialva and P. Beldade, Genome Biology Evolution, 15. 2023.
Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive DNA sequences capable of changing position in host genomes, thereby causing mutations. TE insertions typically have deleterious effects but they can also be beneficial. Increasing evidence of the contribution of TEs to adaptive evolution ...

Ovarian Transcriptional Response to Wolbachia Infection in D. melanogaster in the Context of Between-Genotype Variation in Gene Expression

Tags: Fruit fly, Wolbachia
S. I. Frantz, C. M. Small, W. A. Cresko and N. D. Singh, G3-Genes Genomes Genetics, 2023.
Wolbachia is a maternally-transmitted endosymbiotic bacteria that infects a wide variety of arthropod and nematode hosts. The effects of Wolbachia on host biology are far-reaching and include changes in host gene expression. However, previous work on the host transcriptional ...

Next-generation CRISPR gene-drive systems using Cas12a nuclease

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Replicator/site directed nuclease
S. Sanz Juste, E. M. Okamoto, X. Feng and V. L. Del Amo, bioRxiv, 2023.02.20.529271. 2023.
One method for reducing the impact of vector-borne diseases is through the use of CRISPR-based gene drives, which manipulate insect populations due to their ability to rapidly propagate desired genetic traits into a target population. However, all current gene drives employ a ...

Expansion and loss of sperm nuclear basic protein genes in Drosophila correspond with genetic conflicts between sex chromosomes

Tags: Fruit fly, Selfish genetic elements, Transmission distortion
C.-H. Chang, I. Mejia Natividad and H. S. Malik, eLife, 12:e85249. 2023.
Many animal species employ sperm nuclear basic proteins (SNBPs) or protamines to package sperm genomes tightly. SNBPs vary across animal lineages and evolve rapidly in mammals. We used a phylogenomic approach to investigate SNBP diversification in Drosophila species. We found ...

A selfish genetic element and its suppressor causes gross damage to testes in a fly

Tags: Fruit fly, Selfish genetic elements, Transmission distortion
S. Lyth, A. Manser, G. Hurst, T. Price and R. Verspoor, bioRxiv, 2023.02.06.527273. 2023.
Selfish genetic elements (SGEs), specifically X-chromosome meiotic drive (XCMD), create huge conflicts within a hosts genome and can have profound effects on fertility. Suppressors are a common evolutionary response to XCMD to negate its costs. However, whether suppressors ...

Assessing potential hybridization between a hypothetical gene drive-modified Drosophila suzukii and nontarget Drosophila species

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Governance, Invasive species, Policy, Risk assessment
S. Wolf, J. Collatz, J. Enkerli, F. Widmer and J. Romeis, Risk Analysis, 2023.
Genetically engineered gene drives (geGD) are potentially powerful tools for suppressing or even eradicating populations of pest insects. Before living geGD insects can be released into the environment, they must pass an environmental risk assessment to ensure that their release ...

Wolbachia Promotes Its Own Uptake by Host Cells

Tags: Fruit fly, Wolbachia
L. B. Nevalainen, E. M. Layton and I. L. G. Newton, Infection and Immunity, e0055722. 2023.
Wolbachia pipientis is an incredibly widespread bacterial symbiont of insects, present in an estimated 25 to 52% of species worldwide. Wolbachia is faithfully maternally transmitted both in a laboratory setting and in the wild. In an established infection, Wolbachia is primarily ...

Single-cell transcriptome sequencing reveals Wolbachia-mediated modification in early stages of Drosophila spermatogenesis

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
W. Dou, B. Sun, Y. Miao, D. Huang and J. Xiao, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 290:20221963. 2023.
Wolbachia are the most widely distributed intracellular bacteria, and their most common effect on host phenotype is cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). A variety of models have been proposed to decipher the molecular mechanism of CI, among which the host modification (HM) model ...

Wolbachia endosymbionts manipulate GSC self-renewal and differentiation to enhance host fertility

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
S. L. Russell, J. R. Castillo and W. T. Sullivan, bioRxiv, 2022.12.15.520626. 2022.
The alphaproteobacterium Wolbachia pipientis infects thousands of arthropod and nematode species worldwide, making it a key target for host biological control. Wolbachia-driven host reproductive manipulations, such as cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), are often credited for ...

Deregulation of Y-linked protamine-like genes in sex chromosome-biased spermatid demise

Tags: Fruit fly, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
J. I. Park, G. W. Bell and Y. M. Yamashita, bioRxiv, 2022.
Meiotic drive is a phenomenon wherein a genetic element achieves a higher rate of transmission than dictated by Mendelian segregation (1-3). One proposed mechanism for meiotic drivers to achieve biased transmission is by sabotaging essential processes of gametogenesis (e.g. ...

Modeling-informed Engineered Genetic Incompatibility strategies to overcome resistance in the invasive Drosophila suzukii

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic incompatibilities, Modeling, Underdominance
A. Sychla, N. R. Feltman, W. D. Hutchison and M. J. Smanski, Frontiers in Insect Science, 2. 2022.
Engineered Genetic Incompatibility (EGI) is an engineered extreme underdominance genetic system wherein hybrid animals are not viable, functioning as a synthetic speciation event. There are several strategies in which EGI could be leveraged for genetic biocontrol of pest ...

Hidden endosymbionts: A male-killer concealed by another endosymbiont and a nuclear suppressor

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Other Symbionts, Wolbachia
K. M. Richardson, P. A. Ross, B. S. Cooper, W. R. Conner, T. Schmidt and A. A. Hoffmann, bioRxiv, 2022.10.19.512817. 2022.
Maternally transmitted endosymbiotic bacteria that cause male killing (MK) have only been described from a few insects, but this may reflect challenges in their detection rather than a rarity of MK. Here we identify MK Wolbachia in populations of Drosophila pseudotakahashii, ...

Mitotic exchange in female germline stem cells is the major source of Sex Ratio chromosome recombination in Drosophila pseudoobscura

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Fruit fly, Modeling, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
S. Koury, G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 2022.
Sex Ratio chromosomes in Drosophila pseudoobscura are selfish X chromosome variants associated with three non-overlapping inversions. In the male germline, Sex Ratio chromosomes distort segregation of X and Y chromosomes (99:1), thereby skewing progeny sex ratio. In the female ...

Wolbachia action in the sperm produces developmentally deferred chromosome segregation defects during the Drosophila mid-blastula transition

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
B. Warecki, S. W. A. Titen, M. S. Alam, G. Vega, N. Lemseffer, K. Hug, et al., eLife, 11:e81292. 2022.
Wolbachia, a vertically transmitted endosymbiont infecting many insects, spreads rapidly through uninfected populations by a mechanism known as cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). In CI, a paternally delivered modification of the sperm leads to chromatin defects and lethality ...

Fitness effects of CRISPR endonucleases in Drosophila melanogaster populations

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Mosquito husbandry
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 ...

Quality control traceability during the packing and release process of Ceratitis capitata for sterile insect technique

Tags: Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Y. Contreras-Navarro, H. Luis-Alvarez, G. García-Coapio, R. Hernández, S. Flores and P. Montoya, Journal of Applied Entomology, 2022.
Abstract In programmes applying the sterile insect technique (SIT), the quality of insects deployed in the field determines the success in preventing, suppressing, containing or eradicating the pest population. In the fruit fly emergence and release facility (ERF) of the Moscamed ...

Hoisted with his own petard: How sex-ratio meiotic drive in Drosophila affinis creates resistance alleles that limit its spread

Tags: Fruit fly, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion, X chromosome
W. J. Ma, E. M. Knoles, K. B. Patch, M. M. Shoaib and R. L. Unckless, J Evol Biol, 2022.
Meiotic drivers are selfish genetic elements that tinker with gametogenesis to bias their own transmission into the next generation of offspring. Such tinkering can have significant consequences on gametogenesis and end up hampering the spread of the driver. In Drosophila ...

CRISPR, an eco-friendly technology, may detect crop pests

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
W. Adam, list23, 2022.
Drosophila suzukii, an invading insect pest, is a threat to agricultural yields, especially to the production of fruits such as strawberries, cherries, plums, and grapes in western countries. Until now, control measures to stop the spread of D. suzukii have been inadequate. A ...

Comparative Ubiquitome Analysis Reveals Deubiquitinating Effects Induced by Wolbachia Infection in Drosophila melanogaster

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
Q. Zong, B. Mao, H. B. Zhang, B. Wang, W. J. Yu, Z. W. Wang and Y. F. Wang, International Journal Molecular Science, 23. 2022.
The endosymbiotic Wolbachia bacteria frequently cause cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) in their insect hosts, where Wolbachia-infected males cross with uninfected females, leading to no or fewer progenies, indicating a paternal modification by Wolbachia. Recent studies have ...

Precision Guided Sterile Males Suppress Populations of an Invasive Crop Pest

Tags: Agriculture, Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Population suppression, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
N. P. Kandul, J. Liu, A. Buchman, I. C. Shriner, R. M. Corder, N. Warsinger-Pepe, T. Yang, A. K. Yadav, M. J. Scott, J. M. Marshall and O. S. Akbari, GEN Biotechnology, 1:372-385. 2022.
The Drosophila suzukii invasion of western countries has created an immense agricultural and economic threat to crop production. Despite many attempts to suppress its population, D. suzukii continues to destroy soft-flesh fruits. Precision guided sterile insect technique (pgSIT) ...

CRISPR-based technology targets global crop pest

Tags: Agriculture, Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
University of California - San Diego, Phys Org, 2022.
Applying new CRISPR-based technology to a broad agricultural need, researchers at the University of California San Diego have set their aims on a worldwide pest known to decimate valuable food crops. Nikolay Kandul, Omar Akbari and their colleagues first demonstrated the ...

Effect of Wolbachia Infection and Adult Food on the Sexual Signaling of Males of the Mediterranean Fruit Fly Ceratitis capitata

Tags: Fruit fly, Incompatible insect technique, Sterile insect technique (SIT), Wolbachia
G. A. Kyritsis, P. Koskinioti, K. Bourtzis and N. T. Papadopoulos, Insects, 13. 2022.
Sexual signaling is a fundamental component of sexual behavior of Ceratitis capitata that highly determines males' mating success. Nutritional status and age are dominant factors known to affect males' signaling performance and define the female decision to accept a male as a ...

“Selfish Genetic Elements” – Supergene Wreaks Havoc in a Genome

Tags: Fruit fly, Genomics, Selfish genetic elements, Transmission distortion
University of Rochester, SciTechDaily, 2022.
“Selfish genetic elements” litter the human genome. They do not seem to benefit their hosts but instead seek only to propagate themselves. These selfish genetic elements can wreak havoc. For example, they can distort sex ratios, impair fertility, cause harmful mutations, and ...

What can we learn from selfish loci that break Mendel’s law?

Tags: Fruit fly, Selfish genetic elements, Transmission distortion
S. E. Zanders, PLOS Biology, 20:e3001700. 2022.
Mendel’s law of segregation provides a critical foundation for genetic inquiry It is not, however, without exceptions Historically, 2 such exceptions (sex chromosome linkage and chromosome missegregation in meiosis) were used by Drosophila geneticists to help demonstrate ...

Hoisted with his own petard: how sex-ratio meiotic drive in <em>Drosophila affinis</em> creates resistance alleles that limit its spread

Tags: Fruit fly, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion, X chromosome
W.-J. Ma, E. M. Knoles, K. B. Patch, M. M. Shoaib and R. L. Unckless, bioRxiv, 2022.02.14.480432. 2022.
Meiotic drivers are selfish genetic elements that tinker with gametogenesis to bias their own transmission into the next generation of offspring. Such tinkering can have significant consequences on gametogenesis and end up hampering the spread of the driver. In Drosophila ...

Male-killing-associated bacteriophage WO identified from comparisons of Wolbachia endosymbionts of Homona magnanima

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Other Symbionts, Sex distorter, Wolbachia
H. Arai, H. Anbutsu, Y. Nishikawa, M. Kogawa, K. Ishii, M. Hosokawa, S.-R. Lin, M. Ueda, M. Nakai, Y. Kunimi, T. Harumoto, D. Kageyama, H. Takeyama and M. N. Inoue, bioRxiv, 2022.
The origin and mechanism of male-killing, an advantageous strategy employed by maternally transmitted symbionts such as Wolbachia, remain unclear. We compared genomes of four Wolbachia strains derived from Homona magnanima, a male-killing strain wHm-t (1.5 Mb), and three ...

A nickase Cas9 gene-drive system promotes super-Mendelian inheritance in Drosophila

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic
V. L. Del Amo, S. S. Juste and V. M. Gantz, Cell Rep, 39:110843. 2022.
CRISPR-based gene-drives have been proposed for managing insect populations, including disease-transmitting mosquitoes, due to their ability to bias their inheritance toward super-Mendelian rates (>50%). Current technologies use a Cas9 that introduces DNA double-strand breaks ...

Intronic gRNAs for the Construction of Minimal Gene Drive Systems

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic
A. Nash, P. Capriotti, A. Hoermann, P. A. Papathanos and N. Windbichler, Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 10. 2022.
Gene drives are promising tools for the genetic control of insect vector or pest populations. CRISPR-based gene drives are generally highly complex synthetic constructs consisting of multiple transgenes and their respective regulatory elements. This complicates the generation of ...

The fate of a suppressed X-linked meiotic driver: experimental evolution in Drosophila simulans

Tags: Fruit fly, Population suppression, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
H. Bastide, D. Ogereau, C. Montchamp-Moreau and P. R. Gérard, Chromosome Research, 2022.
Sex-ratio (SR) meiotic drivers are X-linked selfish genetic elements that promote their own transmission by preventing the production of Y-bearing sperm, which usually lowers male fertility. The spread of SR drivers in populations is expected to trigger the evolution of unlinked ...

A homing suppression gene drive with multiplexed gRNAs maintains high drive conversion efficiency and avoids functional resistance alleles

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Population suppression, Resistance
E. Yang, M. Metzloff, A. M. Langmuller, X. J. Xu, A. G. Clark, P. W. Messer and J. Champer, G3-Genes Genomes Genetics, 13. 2022.
Gene drives are engineered alleles that can bias inheritance in their favor, allowing them to spread throughout a population. They could potentially be used to modify or suppress pest populations, such as mosquitoes that spread diseases. CRISPR/Cas9 homing drives, which copy ...

Field Suppression of Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) (Drosophila suzukii Matsumura) Using the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT)

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
R. A. Homem, Z. Mateos-Fierro, R. Jones, D. Gilbert, A. R. McKemey, G. Slade and M. T. Fountain, Insects, 13. 2022.
Drosophila suzukii (spotted wing drosophila—SWD) is an economically important pest of soft and stone fruit worldwide. Control relies on broad-spectrum insecticides, which are neither fully effective nor environmentally sustainable. The sterile insect technique (SIT) is a ...

Evaluation of Additional Drosophila suzukii Male-Only Strains Generated Through Remobilization of an FL19 Transgene

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetically modified organisms, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
A. Yamamoto, A. K. Yadav and M. J. Scott, Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 10. 2022.
Drosophila suzukii (D. suzukii) (Matsumura, 1931; Diptera: Drosophilidae), also known as spotted wing Drosophila, is a worldwide pest of fruits with soft skins such as blueberries and cherries. Originally from Asia, D. suzukii is now present in the Americas and Europe and has ...

No Sting in the Tail for Sterile Bisex Queensland Fruit Fly (Bactrocera tryoni Froggatt) Release Programs

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
O. L. Reynolds, D. Collins, B. C. Dominiak and T. Osborne, Insects, 2022.
Global markets do not tolerate the presence of fruit fly (Tephritidae) in horticultural produce. A key method of control for tephritidae pests, is the sterile insect technique (SIT). Several countries release a bisex strain, i.e., males and females, however the sterile male is ...

Hoisted with his own petard: how sex-ratio meiotic drive in Drosophila affnis creates resistance alleles that limit its spread

Tags: Fruit fly, Resistance, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
W.-J. Ma, K. B. Patch, E. M. Knoles, M. M. Shoaib and R. L. Unckless, bioRxiv, 2022.02.14.480432. 2022.
Meiotic drivers are selfish genetic elements that tinker with gameto-genesis to bias their own transmission into the next generation of off-spring. Such tinkering can have significant consequences on gameto-genesis and end up hampering the spread of the driver. In Drosophila ...

Endosymbionts moderate constrained sex allocation in a haplodiploid thrips species in a temperature-sensitive way

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Selfish genetic elements, Sex distorter, Wolbachia
A. Katlav, D. T. Nguyen, J. L. Morrow, R. N. Spooner-Hart and M. Riegler, Heredity, 9. 2022.
Maternally inherited bacterial endosymbionts that affect host fitness are common in nature. Some endosymbionts colonise host populations by reproductive manipulations (such as cytoplasmic incompatibility; CI) that increase the reproductive fitness of infected over uninfected ...

Could Crispr Flip the Switch on Insects’ Resistance to Pesticides?

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Malaria, Mosquitoes, Resistance
E. Mullin, WIRED, 2022.
WHILE THE COVID-19 pandemic raged across the world in 2020, another disease was quietly infecting more than 220 million people on the continent of Africa: malaria. That year, the disease led to more than 600,000 deaths, most of them children. Caused by the parasite Plasmodium, ...

Genetically engineered insects with sex-selection and genetic incompatibility enable population suppression

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Genetic incompatibilities, Incompatible insect technique, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
A. Upadhyay, N. R. Feltman, A. Sychla, A. Janzen, S. R. Das, M. Maselko and M. Smanski, eLife, 11. 2022.
Engineered Genetic Incompatibility (EGI) is a method to create species-like barriers to sexual reproduction. It has applications in pest control that mimic Sterile Insect Technique when only EGI males are released. This can be facilitated by introducing conditional ...

Paternal transmission of the Wolbachia CidB toxin underlies cytoplasmic incompatibility

Tags: Culex, Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Toxin-antidote, Wolbachia
B. Horard, K. Terretaz, A. S. Gosselin-Grenet, H. Sobry, M. Sicard, F. Landmann and B. Loppin, Current Biology, 2022.
Wolbachia are widespread endosymbiotic bacteria that manipulate the reproduction of arthropods through a diversity of cellular mechanisms. In cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), a sterility syndrome originally discovered in the mosquito Culex pipiens, uninfected eggs fertilized by ...

Genetic Strategy Reverses Insecticide Resistance

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Malaria, Mosquitoes, Resistance
H. Tasoff, The Current, 2022.
University of California biologists have now developed a method that reverses insecticide resistance using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. A team including UC Santa Barbara researchers Craig Montell(link is external) and Menglin Li(link is external), UC San Diego researchers Bhagyashree ...

Stakeholder engagement to inform the risk assessment and governance of gene drive technology to manage spotted-wing drosophila

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic biocontrol, Governance, Invasive species, Risk assessment, Stakeholder engagement
A. E. Kokotovich, S. K. Barnhill-Dilling, J. E. Elsensohn, R. Li, J. A. Delborne and H. Burrack, Journal of Environmental Management, 307:114480. 2022.
Emerging biotechnologies, such as gene drive technology, are increasingly being proposed to manage a variety of pests and invasive species. As one method of genetic biocontrol, gene drive technology is currently being developed to manage the invasive agricultural pest ...

Genetic conversion of a split-drive into a full-drive element

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Self limiting
G. Terradas, J. B. Bennett, Z. Li, J. M. Marshall and E. Bier, bioRxiv, 2021.12.05.471291. 2021.
Gene-drive systems offer an important new avenue for spreading beneficial traits into wild populations. Their core components, Cas9 and guide RNA (gRNA), can either be linked within a single cassette (full gene drive, fGD) or provided in two separate elements (split gene drive, ...

Nuclear transport genes recurrently duplicate by means of RNA intermediates in Drosophila but not in other insects

Tags: Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
A. Mirsalehi, D. N. Markova, M. Eslamieh and E. Betrán, BMC Genomics, 22:876. 2021.
We find that most of the nuclear transport duplications in Drosophila are of a few classes of nuclear transport genes, RNA mediated and fast evolving. We also retrieve many pseudogenes for the Ran gene. Some of the duplicates are relatively young and likely contributing to the ...

Rapid evolutionary dynamics of an expanding family of meiotic drive factors and their hpRNA suppressors

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
J. Vedanayagam, C. J. Lin and E. C. Lai, Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2021.
Meiotic drivers are a class of selfish genetic elements whose existence is frequently hidden due to concomitant suppressor systems. Accordingly, we know little of their evolutionary breadth and molecular mechanisms. Here, we trace the evolution of the Dox meiotic drive system in ...

CRISPR gene-drive systems based on Cas9 nickases promote super-Mendelian inheritance in Drosophila

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic
V. Lopez del Amo, S. Sanz Juste and V. M. Gantz, bioRxiv, 2021.12.01.470847. 2021.
CRISPR-based gene drive systems can be used to modify entire wild populations due to their ability to bias their own inheritance towards super-Mendelian rates (>100%). Current gene drives contain a Cas9 and a gRNA gene inserted at the location targeted by the gRNA. These ...

Gene drive that results in addiction to a temperature-sensitive version of an essential gene triggers population collapse in Drosophila

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Population modification/replacement, Population suppression, Selfish genetic elements, Toxin-antidote
G. Oberhofer, T. Ivy and B. A. Hay, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118:e2107413118. 2021.
One strategy for population suppression seeks to use gene drive to spread genes that confer conditional lethality or sterility, providing a way of combining population modification with suppression. Stimuli of potential interest could be introduced by humans, such as an otherwise ...

Area-wide management of fruit flies in a tropical mango growing area integrating the sterile insect technique and biological control: From a research to an operational programme

Tags: Biological control, Fruit fly, Pest management, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Liedo, P., Montoya, P. , and Toledo, J., AREA-WIDE INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT: Development and Field Application, 2021.
The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) has been successfully used for the control of fruit flies in a number of places in the world. One requirement for its successful application is that wild populations should be at low densities to achieve effective sterile to wild fly ...

Area-wide management of mediterranean fruit fly with the sterile insect technique in South Africa: New production and management techniques pay dividends

Tags: Africa, Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Venter, J. H., Baard, C. W. L., and Barnes, B. N., AREA-WIDE INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT: Development and Field Application, 2021.
A mass-rearing facility to produce sterile male Mediterranean fruit flies, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann), for a Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) programme in the Hex River Valley in the Western Cape Province started in the late 1990s. The programme was initially underfunded and ...

Wolbachia reduces virus infection in a natural population of Drosophila

Tags: Arbovirus, Dengue, Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Other Symbionts, Wolbachia
R. Cogni, S. D. Ding, A. C. Pimentel, J. P. Day and F. M. Jiggins, Communications Biology, 4:1327. 2021.
Wolbachia is a maternally transmitted bacterial symbiont that is estimated to infect approximately half of arthropod species. In the laboratory it can increase the resistance of insects to viral infection, but its effect on viruses in nature is unknown. Here we report that in a ...

Temperature-Inducible Precision-Guided Sterile Insect Technique

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
N. P. Kandul, J. R. Liu and O. S. Akbari, CRISPR Journal, 14. 2021.
Releases of sterile males are the gold standard for many insect population control programs, and precise sex sorting to remove females prior to male releases is essential to the success of these operations. To advance traditional methods for scaling the generation of sterile ...

Centromere function in asymmetric cell division in Drosophila female and male germline stem cells

Tags: Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
A. M. Kochendoerfer, F. Modafferi and E. M. Dunleavy, Open Biology, 11:210107. 2021.
The centromere is the constricted chromosomal region required for the correct separation of the genetic material at cell division. The kinetochore protein complex assembles at the centromere and captures microtubules emanating from the centrosome to orchestrate chromosome ...

RNA virome diversity and Wolbachia infection in individual Drosophila simulans flies

Tags: Arbovirus, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
A. S. Ortiz-Baez, M. Shi, A. A. Hoffmann and E. C. Holmes, Journal of General Virology, 102. 2021.
The endosymbiont bacteria of the genus Wolbachia are associated with multiple mutualistic effects on insect biology, including nutritional and antiviral properties. Members of the genus Wolbachia naturally occur in fly species of the genus Drosophila, providing an operational ...

Ecological vulnerability analysis for suppression of Drosophila suzukii by gene drives

Tags: Ecology, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Risk and safety, Risk assessment
C. R. Lalyer, L. Sigsgaard and B. Giese, Global Ecology and Conservation, 32:e01883. 2021.
Synthetic gene drives are transgenic constructs that aim to bias heredity and thereby influence the characteristics and fate of populations regarding abundance and evolution. Aside from irreversible effects in ecosystems that could be triggered by the release of a gene drive, ...

Sexual selection can partly explain low frequencies of Segregation Distorter alleles

Tags: Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
T. A. Keaney, T. M. Jones and L. Holman, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288:20211190. 2021.
The Segregation Distorter (SD) allele found in Drosophila melanogaster distorts Mendelian inheritance in heterozygous males by causing developmental failure of non-SD spermatids, such that greater than 90% of the surviving sperm carry SD. This within-individual advantage should ...

Wolbachia-Conferred Antiviral Protection Is Determined by Developmental Temperature

Tags: Arbovirus, Fruit fly, Population modification/replacement, Wolbachia
E. Chrostek, N. Martins, M. S. Marialva and L. Teixeira, mBio, e0292320. 2021.
Overall, we show that Wolbachia-conferred antiviral protection is temperature dependent, being present or absent depending on the environmental conditions. This interaction likely impacts Wolbachia-host interactions in nature and, as a result, frequencies of host and symbionts in ...

Diverse wMel variants of Wolbachia pipientis differentially rescue fertility and cytological defects of the bag of marbles partial loss of function mutation in Drosophila melanogaster

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Wolbachia
J. E. Bubnell, P. Fernandez-Begne, C. K. S. Ulbing and C. F. Aquadro, G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 2021.
In Drosophila melanogaster, the maternally inherited endosymbiont Wolbachia pipientis interacts with germline stem cell genes during oogenesis. One such gene, bag of marbles (bam) is the key switch for differentiation and also shows signals of adaptive evolution for protein ...

Satellite DNA-mediated diversification of a sex-ratio meiotic drive gene family in Drosophila

Tags: Fruit fly, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
C. A. Muirhead and D. C. Presgraves, Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2021.
Sex chromosomes are susceptible to the evolution of selfish meiotic drive elements that bias transmission and distort progeny sex ratios. Conflict between such sex-ratio drivers and the rest of the genome can trigger evolutionary arms races resulting in genetically suppressed ...

A Monte Carlo study to investigate the feasibility to use the Moroccan panoramic irradiator in sterile insect technique programs

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
A. Aknouch, Y. El-ouardi, L. Hamroud, R. Sebihi, M. Mouhib, M. Yjjou, A. Didi and A. Choukri, Radiation and Environmental Biophysics, 2021.
Mediterranean fly pest (Ceratitis) is one of the most destructive pests of fruit species in Morocco. The sterile insect technique (SIT) is an environmentally friendly strategy that uses ionizing radiation to sterilize adult insects. Morocco has a panoramic gamma irradiator used ...

Red queen’s race: rapid evolutionary dynamics of an expanding family of meiotic drive factors and their hpRNA suppressors

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Transmission distortion, X chromosome
J. Vedanayagam, C.-J. Lin and E. C. Lai, bioRxiv, 2021.08.05.454923. 2021.
Meiotic drivers are a class of selfish genetic elements that are widespread across eukaryotes. Their activities are often detrimental to organismal fitness and thus trigger drive suppression to ensure fair segregation during meiosis. Accordingly, their existence is frequently ...

Comparative response to post-production process of two Anastrepha ludens strains: Application in the sterile insect technique

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
J. Arredondo, J. F. Aguirre-Medina, J. S. Meza, J. Cancino and F. Diaz-Fleischer, Journal of Applied Entomology, 11. 2021.
The new desiccation-resistant (DR) strain of Anastrepha ludens Loew differs in its life-history traits from the non-selected strain (NS). Given the innate resistance of DR flies to stressors, it is necessary to determine the packing and shipment conditions for their use in the ...

Distinct spermiogenic phenotypes underlie sperm elimination in the Segregation Distorter meiotic drive system

Tags: Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
M. Herbette, X. L. Wei, C. H. Chang, A. M. Larracuente, B. Loppin and R. Dubruille, PLOS Genetics, 17:26. 2021.
Here we show that SD/SD+ males of different genotypes but with similarly strong degrees of distortion have distinct spermiogenic phenotypes. In some genotypes, SD+ spermatids fail to fully incorporate protamines after the removal of histones, and degenerate during the ...

Effect of the timing of pupal irradiation on the quality and sterility of oriental fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) for use in Sterile Insect Technique

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Mosquito husbandry, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
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 ...

Remating in Ceratitis capitata sterile males: Implications in sterile insect technique programmes

Tags: Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
M. Catala-Oltra, E. Llacer, O. Dembilio, I. Pla, A. Urbaneja and M. Perez-Hedo, Journal of Applied Entomology, 8. 2021.
Sterile insect technique (SIT) is used, among other biological control tools, as a sustainable measure for the management of Ceratitis capitata Wiedemann (Diptera: Tephritidae) in many agricultural regions where this pest can trigger severe economic impacts. The tendency of wild ...

A transgenic female killing system for the genetic control of Drosophila suzukii

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
M. F. Schetelig, J. Schwirz and Y. Yan, Scientific Reports, 11:12938. 2021.
The spotted wing Drosophila (Drosophila suzukii) is an invasive pest of soft-skinned fruit crops. It is rapidly transmitted in Europe and North America, causing widespread agricultural losses. Genetic control strategies such as the sterile insect technique (SIT) have been ...

Experimental demonstration of tethered gene drive systems for confined population modification or suppression

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Gene drive synthetic, Population suppression, Replicator/site directed nuclease
M. Metzloff, E. Yang, S. Dhole, A. G. Clark, P. W. Messer and J. Champer, bioRxiv, 2021.05.29.446308. 2021.
Tethered drive systems, in which a locally confined gene drive provides the CRISPR nuclease needed for a homing drive, could provide a solution to this problem, offering the power of a homing drive and confinement of the supporting drive. Here, we demonstrate the engineering of a ...

A Novel Genetic Sexing Strain of Anastrepha Ludens for Cost-Effective Sterile Insect Technique Applications: Improved Genetic Stability and Rearing Efficiency

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
E. Ramírez-Santos, P. Rendon, G. Gouvi, A. Zacharopoulou, K. Bourtzis, C. Cáceres and K. Bloem, Insects, 12. 2021.
Anastrepha ludens (Loew) is one of the most destructive insect pests damaging several fruits of economic importance. The sterile insect technique (SIT) is used under an area-wide integrated pest management approach, to suppress these pest populations. Mass rearing facilities were ...

Pest reduction with female killers and sterile males

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
L. Mertz, Good Fruit Grower, 2021.
New ways to fight spotted wing drosophila are in the works, thanks to new genetic engineering tools. These transgenic methods introduce new reproduction-hampering genes into male SWD, so that when they mate with females, the females either don’t have any young, or their female ...

New genetic copycatchers detect efficient and precise CRISPR editing in a living organism

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO, 2021.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have laid the groundwork for a potential new type of gene therapy using novel CRISPR-based techniques. Working in fruit flies and human cells, research led by UC San Diego Postdoctoral Scholar Zhiqian Li in Division of ...

CopyCatchers are versatile active genetic elements that detect and quantify inter-homolog somatic gene conversion

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic
Z. Li, N. Marcel, S. Devkota, A. Auradkar, S. M. Hedrick, V. M. Gantz and E. Bier, Nature Communications, 12:2625. 2021.
CRISPR-based active genetic elements, or gene-drives, copied via homology-directed repair (HDR) in the germline, are transmitted to progeny at super-Mendelian frequencies. Active genetic elements also can generate widespread somatic mutations, but the genetic basis for such ...

Sterile Insect Technique Programme against Mediterranean Fruit Fly in the Valencian Community (Spain)

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Pest management, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
I. Plá, J. García de Oteyza, C. Tur, M. Á. Martínez, M. C. Laurín, E. Alonso, M. Martínez, Á. Martín, R. Sanchis, M. C. Navarro, M. T. Navarro, R. Argilés, M. Briasco, Ó. Dembilio and V. Dalmau, Insects, 12. 2021.
The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wied.), is an endemic pest in fruit-growing areas of the Spanish Mediterranean coast. In the Valencian Community, it represents a serious problem in the cultivation of citrus and numerous species of fruit, such as peach, cherry, ...

Major fly pest genetically modified in lab to produce more males

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, X chromosome
H. Dunning, Imperial College London, 2021.
It has been predicted that the world's population will increase to over nine billion people by 2050, and that global food production will need to increase by around 70 percent to match this rate of change. Lead researcher Dr Angela Meccariello, from the Department of Life ...

Engineered sex ratio distortion by X-shredding in the global agricultural pest Ceratitis capitata

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, X chromosome
A. Meccariello, F. Krsticevic, R. Colonna, G. Del Corsano, B. Fasulo, P. A. Papathanos and N. Windbichler, BMC Biology, 19:78. 2021.
Genetic sex ratio distorters are systems aimed at effecting a bias in the reproductive sex ratio of a population and could be applied for the area-wide control of sexually reproducing insects that vector disease or disrupt agricultural production. One example of such a system ...

Introduction of a cold sensitivity-conferring mutation into the RTA-Bddsx hybrid system of Bactrocera dorsalis for establishment of a thermally controllable homozygous line

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene editing, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
S. M. Dai, C. Y. Huang and C. Chang, Pest Management Science, 7. 2021.
BACKGROUND For efficient control of the economically important fruit pest Bactrocera dorsalis, a hybrid system combining ricin toxicity and sex-related alternative splicing of the doublesex gene has been developed. This system exhibits the expected female-specific lethal effect; ...

Determining the Sterilization Doses under Hypoxia for the Novel Black Pupae Genetic Sexing Strain of Anastrepha fraterculus (Diptera, Tephritidae)

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
P. D. Giustina, T. Mastrangelo, S. Ahmad, G. Mascarin and C. Caceres, Insects, 12. 2021.
Our study reports for the first time the dose-sterility response under hypoxia for two different A. fraterculus strains. The pupae were derived from a bisexual strain (a Brazilian-1 population) and a recently developed genetic sexing strain (GSS-89). Two hours prior to ...

Genetically Encoded CRISPR components Yield Efficient Gene Editing in the Invasive Pest, Drosophila suzukii

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Gene editing
N. P. Kandul, E. J. Belikoff, J. Liu, A. Buchman, F. Li, A. Yamamoto, T. Yang, I. Shriner, M. J. Scott and O. Akbari, bioRxiv, 2021.03.15.435483. 2021.
Here we have developed transgenic strains that encode three different terminators and four different promoters to express Cas9 in both the soma and/or germline of SWD. The Cas9 lines were evaluated through genetic crossing to transgenic lines that encode single guide RNAs ...

A confinable home and rescue gene drive for population modification

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Modeling, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Resistance
N. P. Kandul, J. Liu, J. B. Bennett, J. M. Marshall and O. S. Akbari, eLife, 10:e65939. 2021.
Homing based gene drives, engineered using CRISPR/Cas9, have been proposed to spread desirable genes throughout populations. However, invasion of such drives can be hindered by the accumulation of resistant alleles. To limit this obstacle, we engineer a confinable population ...

Improving the Phenotypic Properties of the Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae) Temperature-Sensitive Lethal Genetic Sexing Strain in Support of Sterile Insect Technique Applications

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Mosquito husbandry, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
M. F. Porras, J. S. Meza, E. G. Rajotte, K. Bourtzis and C. Caceres, Journal of Economic Entomology, 113:2688-2694. 2021.
We present the first evidence that this slower development is due to a different gene, here namely slow development (sd), which is closely linked to the tsl gene. Taking advantage of recombination phenomena between the two loci, we report the isolation of a novel temperature ...

White pupae phenotype of tephritids is caused by parallel mutations of a MFS transporter

Tags: Fruit fly, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
C. M. Ward, R. A. Aumann, M. A. Whitehead, K. Nikolouli, G. Leveque, G. Gouvi, E. Fung, S. J. Reiling, H. Djambazian, M. A. Hughes, S. Whiteford, C. Caceres-Barrios, T. N. M. Nguyen, A. Choo, P. Crisp, S. B. Sim, S. M. Geib, F. Marec, I. Hacker, J. Ragous, Nature Communications, 12. 2021.
Here, we use classical and modern genetic approaches to identify and functionally characterize causal wp(-) mutations in these distantly related fruit fly species. We find that the wp phenotype is produced by parallel mutations in a single, conserved gene. CRISPR/Cas9-mediated ...

Manipulation of Gut Symbionts for Improving the Sterile Insect Technique: Quality Parameters of Bactrocera dorsalis (Diptera: Tephritidae) Genetic Sexing Strain Males After Feeding on Bacteria-Enriched Diets

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
Q. Zhang, P. Cai, B. Wang, X. Liu, J. Lin, R. Hua, H. Zhang, C. Yi, X. Song, Q. Ji, J. Yang and S. Chen, Journal of Economic Entomology, 114:560-570. 2021.
One environmentally friendly method used to manage Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel), a key agricultural pest of substantial economic importance, is the sterile insect technique (SIT). Nevertheless, several deficiencies related to this strategy impair the success of the SIT, including ...

Edit, undo: Temporary gene editing could help solve the mosquito problem

Tags: Aedes, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Genomics, Self limiting, Selfish genetic elements
L. Dormehl, digitaltrends, 2020.
But if SyFy original movies have taught us anything, it’s that genetically tweaking organisms and then releasing them can… well, not go quite according to plan.With that in mind, a new Texas A&M AgriLife Research project seeks to test out genetic modifications of mosquitos ...

Precise single base substitution in the shibire gene by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated homology directed repair in Bactrocera tryoni

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
A. Choo, E. Fung, I. Y. Chen, R. Saint, P. Crisp and S. W. Baxter, BMC Genetics, 21. 2020.
Here we introduce a known Drosophila melanogaster temperature sensitive embryonic lethal mutation into Bactrocera tryoni, a serious horticultural pest in Australia. A non-synonymous point mutation in the D. melanogaster gene shibire causes embryonic lethality at 29 degrees C and ...

‘A plague to be reckoned with’: UMN research creates a buzz with invasive fruit fly research

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
B. Most, The Minnesota Daily, 2020.
n early November, assistant professor Mike Smanski published an article about a new breakthrough in this research, demonstrating for the first time this kind of genetic engineering was possible in the common fruit fly. This shows that researchers could engineer this work into ...

The Sterile Insect Technique: Success and Perspectives in the Neotropics

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Pest management, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
D. Perez-Staples, F. Diaz-Fleischer and P. Montoya, Neotropical Entomology, 14. 2020.
Here, we review SIT in the Neotropics and focus on particular recent successful cases of eradication of the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann), as well as effective programs used against the Mexican fruit fly Anastrepha ludens (Loew), the New World screwworm ...

Selfish genetic elements and male fertility

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Fruit fly, Genetic incompatibilities, Population genetics/dynamics, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion, Wolbachia, X chromosome
R. L. Verspoor, T. A. R. Price and N. Wedell, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 375:7. 2020.
Selfish genetic elements (SGEs) are diverse and near ubiquitous in Eukaryotes and can be potent drivers of evolution. Here, we discuss SGEs that specifically act on sperm to gain a transmission advantage to the next generation. The diverse SGEs that affect sperm often impose ...

Fruit fly breakthrough puts killer mozzies on notice

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic incompatibilities
V. Tressider, The Lighthouse, 2020.
A new designer fruit fly paves the way for scientists to replace disease-carrying mosquitoes with harmless, genetically modified versions, says Macquarie University researcher Dr Maciej Maselko.

Inherently confinable split-drive systems in Drosophila

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Resistance, Self limiting
G. Terradas, A. B. Buchman, J. B. Bennett, I. Shriner, J. M. Marshall, O. S. Akbari and E. Bier, bioRxiv, 2020.09.03.282079. 2020.
Here, we test split gene-drive (sGD) systems in Drosophila melanogaster that were inserted into essential genes required for viability (rab5, rab11, prosalpha2) or fertility (spo11). I

A home and rescue gene drive forces its inheritance stably persisting in populations

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Resistance
N. P. Kandul, J. Liu, J. B. Bennett, J. M. Marshall and O. Akbari, bioRxiv, 2020.08.21.261610. 2020.
We demonstrate that HomeR can achieve nearly ~100% transmission enabling it to persist at genotypic fixation in several multi-generational population cage experiments, underscoring its long term stability.

Engineered Reproductively Isolated Species Drive Reversible Population Replacement

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic incompatibilities, Incompatible insect technique, Population modification/replacement
A. Buchman, I. Shriner, T. Yang, J. Liu, I. Antoshechkin, J. M. Marshall, M. W. Perry and O. S. Akbari, bioRxiv, 2020.08.09.242982. 2020.
Engineered reproductive species barriers are useful for impeding gene flow and driving desirable genes into wild populations in a reversible threshold-dependent manner. We engineer multiple reproductively isolated SPECIES and demonstrate their threshold-dependent gene drive ...

CRISPR gene drives could eliminate many vector-driven pests and diseases, but challenges remain

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetics, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Resistance
J. Champer, Genetic Literacy Project, 2020.
A functioning gene drive system could fundamentally change our strategies for the control of vector-borne diseases by facilitating rapid dissemination of transgenes that prevent pathogen transmission or reduce vector capacity. CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive promises such a mechanism, ...

Extensive Recombination Suppression and Epistatic Selection Causes Chromosome-Wide Differentiation of a Selfish Sex Chromosome in Drosophila pseudoobscura

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Fruit fly, Genetics, Sex distorter
Z. L. Fuller, S. A. Koury, C. J. Leonard, R. E. Young, K. Ikegami, J. Westlake, S. Richards, S. W. Schaeffer and N. Phadnis, Genetics, 216:205. 2020.
Here, we conduct a multifaceted study of the multiply inverted Drosophila pseudoobscura SR chromosome to understand the evolutionary history, genetic architecture, and present-day dynamics that shape this enigmatic selfish chromosome.

Chemical controllable gene drive in Drosophila

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Replicator/site directed nuclease
D. Chae, J. Lee, N. Lee, K. Park, S. J. Moon and H. H. Kim, ACS Synthetic Biology, in press. 2020.
Here, we report a chemical-induced control of gene drive. We prepared a CRISPR-based gene drive system that can be removed by a site-specific recombinase, Rippase, the expression of which is induced by the chemical RU486 in fruit flies. Exposure of fruit flies to RU486 resulted ...

Nix alone is sufficient to convert female Aedes aegypti into fertile males and myo-sex is needed for male flight

Tags: Aedes, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic biocontrol, Population suppression, Sterile insect technique (SIT), Y-chromosome
A. Aryan, M. A. E. Anderson, J. K. Biedler, Y. M. Qi, J. M. Overcash, A. N. Naumenko, M. V. Sharakhova, C. H. Mao, Z. N. Adelman and Z. J. Tu, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117:17702-17709. 2020.
Here, we report the generation of multiple transgenic lines that express Nix under the control of its own promoter. Genetic and molecular analyses of these lines provided insights unattainable from previous transient experiments. We show that the Nix transgene alone, in the ...

Analysis of a Strong Suppressor of Segregation Distorter inDrosophila melanogaster

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Population suppression, Transmission distortion
R. G. Temin, Genetics, 215:1085-1105. 2020.
These studies highlight the polygenic nature of distortion and its dependence on a constellation of positive and negative modifiers, provide insight into the stability of Mendelian transmission in natural populations even when a drive system arises, and pave the way for molecular ...

Recessive Z-linked lethals and the retention of haplotype diversity in a captive butterfly population

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Evolution, Fruit fly, Genetics, Moths, Transmission distortion
I. J. Saccheri, S. Whiteford, C. J. Yung and A. E. van't Hof, Heredity, 2020.
Sex chromosomes are predicted to harbour elevated levels of sexually antagonistic variation due to asymmetries in the heritability of recessive traits in the homogametic versus heterogametic sex.

Development and testing of a novel killer–rescue self-limiting gene drive system in Drosophila melanogaster

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Toxin-antidote
S. H. Webster, M. R. Vella and M. J. Scott, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287:20192994. 2020.
Here we report the development and testing of a novel self-limiting gene drive system, Killer–Rescue (K–R), in Drosophila melanogaster. This system is composed of an autoregulated Gal4 Killer (K) and a Gal4-activated Gal80 Rescue (R). Overexpression of Gal4 is lethal, but in ...

Engineering multiple species-like genetic incompatibilities in insects

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic incompatibilities, Regulation, Toxin-antidote, Underdominance
M. Maselko, N. Feltman, A. Upadhyay, A. Hayward, S. Das, N. Myslicki, A. J. Peterson, M. B. O’Connor and M. J. Smanski, bioRxiv, 2020.
Speciation constrains the flow of genetic information between populations of sexually reproducing organisms. Gaining control over mechanisms of speciation would enable new strategies to manage wild populations of disease vectors, agricultural pests, and invasive species. ...

Engineering a minimal gene drive system for integral replacement in Drosophila melanogaster

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Population modification/replacement
A. Nash, Imperial College London, 2020.
Gene drives represent a powerful tool for the control of vector-borne diseases. By suppressing or replacing vector populations, laboratory studies have highlighted the potential for this group of tools to make a powerful impact on the burden of zoonotic disease. Current genetic ...

A fly model establishes distinct mechanisms for synthetic CRISPR/Cas9 sex distorters

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Other arthropods, Y-chromosome
B. Fasulo, A. Meccariello, M. Morgan, C. Borufka, P. A. Papathanos and N. Windbichler, PLOS Genetics, 16:e1008647. 2020.
Author summary Harmful insect populations can be eliminated for a lack of females if they are made to produce mostly male offspring. There are genes that occur naturally that make males produce mostly sons and, although we don’t know exactly how they work, this appears to ...

Genetic Variation and Potential for Resistance Development to the tTA Overexpression Lethal System in Insects

Tags: Fruit fly, Oxitec, Resistance, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
K. E. Knudsen, W. R. Reid, T. M. Barbour, L. M. Bowes, J. Duncan, E. Philpott, S. Potter and M. J. Scott, G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, Early Online:g3.400990.2020. 2020.
Release of insect pests carrying the dominant lethal tetracycline transactivator (tTA) overexpression system has been proposed as a means for population suppression. High levels of the tTA transcription factor are thought to be toxic due to either transcriptional squelching or ...

Autosomal suppression and fitness costs of an old driving X chromosome in Drosophila testacea

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Selfish genetic elements, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion, X chromosome
G. Keais, S. Lu and S. Perlman, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2020.
Driving X chromosomes (XDs) are meiotic drivers that bias their own transmission through males by killing Y-bearing gametes. These chromosomes can in theory spread rapidly in populations and cause extinction, but many are found as balanced polymorphisms or as ?cryptic? XDs shut ...

A selfish genetic element linked to increased lifespan impacts metabolism in female house mice

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Population genetics/dynamics, Rodents, Transmission distortion
Lopes, P. C. and A. K. Lindholm, The Journal of Experimental Biology, 2019:212704. 2019.
Gene drive systems can lead to the evolution of traits that further enhance the transmission of the driving element. In gene drive, one allele is transmitted to offspring at a higher frequency than the homologous allele. This has a range of consequences, which generally include a ...

Gene drive and resilience through renewal with next generation Cleave and Rescue selfish genetic elements

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Selfish genetic elements, Toxin-antidote, Underdominance
Oberhofer, G., T. Ivy and B. A. Hay, bioRxiv, 2019:2019.2012.2013.876169. 2019.
Gene drive-based strategies for modifying populations face the problem that genes encoding cargo and the drive mechanism are subject to separation, mutational inactivation, and loss of efficacy. Resilience, an ability to respond to these eventualities in ways that restore ...

Mass-Rearing of Drosophila suzukii for Sterile Insect Technique Application: Evaluation of Two Oviposition Systems

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
F. Sassù, K. Nikolouli, S. Caravantes, G. Taret, R. Pereira, M. J. B. Vreysen, C. Stauffer and C. Cáceres, Insects, 10. 2019.
Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is an invasive pest of a wide range of commercial soft-skinned fruits. To date, most management tactics are based on spraying of conventional and/or organic insecticides, baited traps, and netting exclusion. Interest has been expressed ...

Does meiotic drive alter male mate preference?

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Population genetics/dynamics, Transmission distortion
S. R. Finnegan, L. Nitsche, M. Mondani, M. F. Camus, K. Fowler and A. Pomiankowski, Behavioral Ecology, 13:194-201. 2019.
Male mate preferences have been demonstrated across a range of species, including the Malaysian stalk-eyed fly, Teleopsis dalmanni. This species is subject to sex-ratio (SR), an X-linked male meiotic driver, which causes the dysfunction of Y-sperm and the production of all-female ...

Sex-ratio meiotic drive shapes the evolution of the Y chromosome in Drosophila simulans

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
Q. Helleu, C. Courret, D. Ogereau, K. L. Burnham, N. Chaminade, M. Chakir, S. Aulard and C. Montchamp-Moreau, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 36:2668-2681. 2019.
The recent emergence and spread of X-linked segregation distorters-called "Paris" system-in the worldwide species Drosophila simulans has elicited the selection of drive-resistant Y chromosomes. Here, we investigate the evolutionary history of 386 Y chromosomes originating from ...

CRISPR gene drive efficiency and resistance rate is highly heritable with no common genetic loci of large effect

Tags: Biological control, CRISPR, Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic engineering, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Resistance
Champer, JW, Z. X.; Luthra, A.; Reeves, R.; Chung, J.; Liu, C.; Lee, Y. L.; Liu, J. X.; Yang, E.; Messer, P. W.; Clark, A. G., Genetics, 212:333-341. 2019.
Gene drives could allow for control of vector-borne diseases by directly suppressing vector populations or spreading genetic payloads designed to reduce pathogen transmission. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) homing gene drives work by cleaving ...

Controlling invasive rodents via synthetic gene drive and the role of polyandry

Tags: Ecology, Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive mechanisms, Gene drive synthetic, Invasive species, Mosquito husbandry, Pest management, Population genetics/dynamics, Rodents
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 ...

Sustainability as a framework for considering gene drive mice for invasive rodent eradication

Tags: Biodiversity/Conservation, Ethics, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive synthetic, Governance, Pest management, Rodents
Barnhill-Dilling, SKS, M.; Blondel, D. V.; Godwin, J., Sustainability, 11:1334. 2019.
Gene drives represent a dynamic and controversial set of technologies with applications that range from mosquito control to the conservation of biological diversity on islands. Currently, gene drives are being developed in mice that may one day serve as an important tool for ...

Multiplexing gRNAs to Hedge Against Resistance to Gene Drive

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly, Replicator/site directed nuclease
Travis Van Warmerdam, IGTRCN, 2018.
Recently, Oberhofer et al (2018) published a paper examining the mechanisms of homing endonuclease gene drives in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They used a novel nuclease-encoding cassette containing four multiplexed gRNAs targeting genes required for ...

Cas9 Gene Drive, Sex-Conversion and Evolved Resistance

Tags: CRISPR, Fruit fly
Anna Buchman, IGTRCN, 2018.
In a recent manuscript, KaramiNejadRanjbar et al. demonstrate the development of a proof of principle Cas9-based suppression gene drive in D. melanogaster that can be applied to pest insects, and discuss the implications of resistance allele formation for practical use of such a ...

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, Wolbachia
Hayashi, 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 ...

Selfish genetic elements

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Population genetics/dynamics, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Selfish genetic elements, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
Agren, JAC, A. G., PLOS Genetics, 14:20. 2018.
Selfish genetic elements (historically also referred to as selfish genes, ultra-selfish genes, selfish DNA, parasitic DNA, genomic outlaws) are genetic segments that can enhance their own transmission at the expense of other genes in the genome, even if this has no or a negative ...

Gene flow mediates the role of sex chromosome meiotic drive during complex speciation

Tags: Fruit fly, Other arthropods, Transmission distortion
Meiklejohn, CDL, Emily L.; Gordon, Kathleen E.; Rzatkiewicz, Thomas; Kingan, Sarah B.; Geneva, Anthony J.; Vedanayagam, Jeffrey P.; Muirhead, Christina A.; Garrigan, Daniel; Stern, David L.; Presgraves, Daven C., eLife, 7:e35468. 2018.
During speciation, sex chromosomes often accumulate interspecific genetic incompatibilities faster than the rest of the genome. The drive theory posits that sex chromosomes are susceptible to recurrent bouts of meiotic drive and suppression, causing the evolutionary build-up of ...

Carrying a selfish genetic element predicts increased migration propensity in free-living wild house mice

Tags: Ecology, Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Rodents
Runge, J-NL, Anna K., Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285:20181333. 2018.
Life is built on cooperation between genes, which makes it vulnerable to parasitism. Selfish genetic elements that exploit this cooperation can achieve large fitness gains by increasing their transmission relative to the rest of the genome. This leads to counter-adaptations that ...

Genetic conflicts: the usual suspects and beyond

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Genetic engineering, Transmission distortion, Wolbachia
McLaughlin, RNM, H. S., Journal of Experimental Biology, 220:6-17. 2017.
Selfishness is pervasive and manifests at all scales of biology, from societies, to individuals, to genetic elements within a genome. The relentless struggle to seek evolutionary advantages drives perpetual cycles of adaptation and counter-adaptation, commonly referred to as Red ...

Sperm competition suppresses gene drive among experimentally evolving populations of house mice

Tags: Ecology, Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Population genetics/dynamics, Rodents, Transmission distortion
Manser, AL, A. K.; Simmons, L. W.; Firman, R. C., Molecular Ecology, 26:5784-5792. 2017.
Drive genes are genetic elements that manipulate the 50% ratio of Mendelian inheritance in their own favour, allowing them to rapidly propagate through populations. The action of drive genes is often hidden, making detection and identification inherently difficult. Yet drive ...

Sry gene drive for rodent control: Reply to Gemmell and Tompkins

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Other mammals, Y-chromosome
Kanavy, DS, M., Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 32:315-316. 2017.
We would like to thank Gemmell and Tompkins for their interest and comments onthe articlebyPiaggioet al. [1].Theissues raised by Gemmell and Tompkins [2] are very pertinent, and they correctly identified that the format of the article did not lend itself to a comprehensive ...

Towards the genetic control of invasive species

Tags: Aedes, Ecology, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic biocontrol, Invasive species, Malaria, Pest management
Harvey-Samuel, TA, T.; Alphey, L., Biological Invasions, 19:1683-1703. 2017.
Invasive species remain one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity. Their control would be enhanced through the development of more effective and sustainable pest management strategies. Recently, a novel form of genetic pest management (GPM) has been developed in which ...

Concept and history of genetic control

Tags: Cytoplasmic incompatibility, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic biocontrol, History, Other Symbionts, Oxitec, Sterile insect technique (SIT)
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 ...

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

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Sex distorter
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 ...

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

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Rodents, Transmission distortion
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 ...

Cas9-triggered chain ablation of cas9 as a gene drive brake

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Gene drive synthetic, Risk and safety
Wu, BL, L. Q.; Gao, X. J. J., Nature Biotechnology, 34:137-138. 2016.
We designed and synthesized a transgene system that we named Cas9-triggered chain ablation (CATCHA). The CATCHA transgene encodes a guide RNA (gRNA) that is expressed ubiquitously from a U6:2 promoter. The gRNA targets a site within the DNA sequence of cas9. The guide RNA is ...

Meiotic drive changes sperm precedence patterns in house mice: potential for male alternative mating tactics?

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Population genetics/dynamics, Rodents, Selfish genetic elements, Sex distorter, Transmission distortion
Sutter, AL, A. K., BMC Evolutionary Biology, 16:15. 2016.
Background: With female multiple mating (polyandry), male-male competition extends to after copulation (sperm competition). Males respond to this selective pressure through physiological, morphological and behavioural adaptations. Sperm competitiveness is commonly decreased in ...

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

Tags: Ecology, Evolution, Fruit fly
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 ...

Detrimental effects of an autosomal selfish genetic element on sperm competitiveness in house mice

Tags: Ecology, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals, Rodents, Transmission distortion
Sutter, AL, A. K., Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 282:1-8. 2015.
Female multiple mating (polyandry) is widespread across many animal taxa and indirect genetic benefits are a major evolutionary force favouring polyandry. An incentive for polyandry arises when multiple mating leads to sperm competition that disadvantages sperm from genetically ...

Meiotic drive influences the outcome of sexually antagonistic selection at a linked locus

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Transmission distortion
Patten, MM, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 27:2360-2370. 2014.
Most meiotic drivers, such as the t-haplotype in Mus and the segregation distorter (SD) in Drosophila, act in a sex-specific manner, gaining a transmission advantage through one sex although suffering only the fitness costs associated with the driver in the other. Their ...

Requirements for effective malaria control with homing endonuclease genes

Tags: Aedes, Anopheles, Biological control, Fruit fly, Other arthropods, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Vector control
Deredec, AG, H. C. J.; Burt, A., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108:e874-e880. 2011.
Malaria continues to impose a substantial burden on human health. We have previously proposed that biological approaches to control the mosquito vector of disease could be developed using homing endonuclease genes (HEGs), a class of selfish or parasitic gene that exists naturally ...

Use of Genetically Engineered Fruit Fly and Pink Bollworm in APHIS Plant Pest Control Programs: Final Environmental Impact Statement—October 2008

Tags: Fruit fly, Genetic biocontrol, Policy, Regulation, Risk and safety
USDA/APHIS, USDA/APHIS, 2008.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), in cooperation with several States and foreign countries, is proposing further development of genetically engineered fruit fly species and pink bollworm for use in various applications ...

Wolbachia and cytoplasmic incompatibility in mosquitoes

Tags: Aedes, Culex, Fruit fly, North America
Sinkins, SP, Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 34:723-729. 2004.
Wolbachia are maternally inherited bacteria that induce cytoplasmic incompatibility in mosquitoes, and are able to use these patterns of sterility to spread themselves through populations. For this reason they have been proposed as a gene drive system for mosquito genetic ...

Transmission ratio distortion in mice

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Lyon, MF, Annual Review of Genetics, 37:393-408. 2003.
The most studied example of transmission ratio distortion (TRD) in mice is that of the t-complex. This is a variant-region of Chromosome 17 which exists as a polymorphism in wild mice. Males heterozygous for a t-haplotype and a normal Chr 17 transmit-the t haplotype to >50% of ...

Site-specific selfish genes as tools for the control and genetic engineering of natural populations

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic engineering, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Vector control
Burt, A, Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 270:921-928. 2003.
Site-specific selfish genes exploit host functions to copy themselves into a defined target DNA sequence, and include homing endonuclease genes, group II introns and some LINE-like transposable elements. If such genes can be engineered to target new host sequences, then they can ...

Nonrandom segregation during meiosis: the unfairness of females

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive mechanisms, Transmission distortion
de Villena, FPMS, C., Mammalian Genome, 12:331-339. 2001.
Most geneticists assume that chromosome segregation during meiosis is Mendelian (i.e., each allele at each locus is represented equally in the gametes). The great majority of reports that discuss non-Mendelian transmission have focused on systems of gametic selection, such as the ...

Segregation distortion of mouse t-haplotypes: The molecular basis emerges

Tags: Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
Schimenti, J, Trends in Genetics, 16:240-243. 2000.
The t haplotype is an ancestral version of proximal mouse chromosome 17 that has evolved mechanisms to persist as an intact genomic variant in mouse populations. t haplotypes contain mutations that affect embryonic development, male fertility and male transmission ratio ...

Physical mapping of male fertility and meiotic drive quantitative trait loci in the mouse t complex using chromosome deficiencies

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Rodents, Transmission distortion
Planchart, AY, Y.; Schimenti, J. C., Genetics, 155:803-812. 2000.
The t complex spans 20 cM of the proximal region of mouse chromosome 17. A variant form, the t haplotype (t), exists at significant frequencies in wild mouse populations and is characterized by the presence of inversions that suppress recombination with Mild-type (+) chromosomes. ...

Segregation distortion in a deme structured population: opposing demands of gene, individual and group selection

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Transmission distortion
van Boven, MW, F. J., Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 12:80-93. 1999.
The evolution of segregation distortion is governed by the interplay of selection at different levels. Despite their systematic advantage at the gamete level, none of the well-known segregation distorters spreads to fixation since they induce severe negative fitness effects at ...

Mariner transposition and transformation of the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti

Tags: Aedes, Fruit fly, Gene editing, Selfish genetic elements
C. J. Coates, N. Jasinskiene, L. Miyashiro and A. A. James, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95:3748-3751. 1998.
The mariner transposable element is capable of interplasmid transposition in the embryonic soma of the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti. To determine if this demonstrated mobility could be utilized to genetically transform the mosquito, a modified mariner element marked with ...

Stable transformation of the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, with the Hermes element from the housefly

Tags: Anopheles, Fruit fly, Gene editing, Selfish genetic elements, Vector control
N. Jasinskiene, C. J. Coates, M. Q. Benedict, A. J. Cornel, C. S. Rafferty, A. A. James and F. H. Collins, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95:3743-3747. 1998.
The mosquito Aedes aegypti is the world's most important vector of yellow fever and dengue viruses, Work is currently in progress to control the transmission of these viruses by genetically altering the capacity of wild Ae, aegypti populations to support virus replication. The ...

Evolution of segregation distortion: Potential for a high degree of polymorphism

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Transmission distortion
van Boven, MW, F. J., Journal of Theoretical Biology, 192:131-142. 1998.
By means of a population genetical model, we study the evolution of segregation distortion. Most models of segregation distortion focus on a single distorter allele. In contrast, we consider the competition between a large number of distorters. Motivated by systems as the t ...

Identification of the t complex-encoded cytoplasmic dynein light chain Tctex1 in inner arm I1 supports the involvement of flagellar dyneins in meiotic drive

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Harrison, AO-C, P.; King, S. M., Journal of Cell Biology, 140:1137-1147. 1998.
The cytoplasmic dynein light chain Tctex1 is a candidate for one of the distorter products involved in the non-Mendelian transmission of mouse t haplotypes. It has been unclear, however, how the t-specific mutations in this protein, which is found associated with cytoplasmic ...

Putting the brake on drive: meiotic drive of t haplotypes in natural populations of mice

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms
Ardlie, KG, Trends in Genetics, 14:189-193. 1998.
Mouse t haplotypes are a 'selfish' form of chromosome 17 that show non-mendelian transmission from heterozygous +/t males. The considerable transmission bias in favour of t haplotypes should result in very high frequencies of these chromosomes in natural populations, but they ...

Identification of a male meiosis-specific gene, Tcte2, which is differentially spliced in species that form sterile hybrids with laboratory mice and deleted in t chromosomes showing meiotic drive

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Braidotti, GB, D. P., Developmental Biology, 186:85-99. 1997.
Tcte2 (t complex testes expressed 2) is a male meiosis-specific gene that maps to band 3.3 of mouse chromosome 17. Two distinct male fertility defects, hybrid sterility and transmission ratio distortion, have previously been mapped to this region. Hybrid sterility arises in ...

Segregation distortion in unstructured and structured populations: Competition between ‘sterile’ t haplotypes

Tags: Fruit fly, Rodents, Transmission distortion
VanBoven, MW, F. J., Netherlands Journal of Zoology, 46:216-226. 1996.
By means of two simple models we investigate the competition between sex-specific segregation distorters in unstructured and structured populations. The models are motivated by the t complex of the house mouse. Some variants at this gene complex, the t haplotypes, distort ...

Competition between segregation distorters: Coexistence of ”superior” and ”inferior” haplotypes at the t complex

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Rodents, Transmission distortion
vanBoven, MW, F. J.; Heg, D.; Huisman, J., Evolution, 50:2488-2498. 1996.
By means of population genetical models, we investigate the competition between sex-specific segregation distorters. Although the models are quite general, they are motivated by a specific example, the t complex of the house mouse. Some variants at this gene complex, the t ...

The mouse t-complex-encoded protein Tctex-1 is a light chain of brain cytoplasmic dynein

Tags: Fruit fly, Other mammals, Transmission distortion
King, SMD, J. F.; Benashski, S. E.; Lye, R. J.; PatelKing, R. S.; Pfister, K. K., Journal of Biological Chemistry, 271:32281-32287. 1996.
Mammalian brain cytoplasmic dynein contains three light chains of M(r) = 8,000, 14,000, add 22,000 (King, S. M., Barbarese, E., Dillman, J. F., III, Patel-King, R. S., Carson, J. H., and Pfister, K. Kr (1996) J. Biol. Chem. 271, 19358-19366). Peptide sequence data (16/16 residues ...

Low frequency of mouse t haplotypes in wild populations is not explained by modifiers of meiotic drive

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms
Ardlie, KGS, L. M., Genetics, 144:1787-1797. 1996.
t haplotypes are naturally occurring forms of mouse chromosome 17 that show non-Mendelian transmission from heterozygous +/t males. In laboratory studies, transmission ratios of greater than or equal to 0.90 or higher are typically observed. With transmission ratios of this ...

Gene transfer into the Medfly, Ceratitis capitata, using a Drosophila hydei transposable element.

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Gene editing, Selfish genetic elements
T. G. Loukeris, I. Livadaras, B. Arca, S. Zabalou and C. Savakis, Science, 270:2002-2005. 1995.
Exogenous functional DNA was introduced into the germline chromosomes of the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly) Ceratitis capitata with a germline transformation system based on the transposable element Minos from Drosophila hydei. Transformants were identified as phenotypic ...

Tctex2 – a sperm tail surface protein mapping to the t-complex

Tags: Fruit fly, Other mammals
Huw, LYG, A. S.; Willison, K.; Artzt, K., Developmental Biology, 170:183-194. 1995.
Transmission ratio distortion (TRD) in mouse t-haplotypes remains the most significant example of meiotic drive in vertebrates. While the underlying mechanism that fuels it is still mysterious, TRD is clearly a complex multigene phenomenon. The characterization of Tctex2 ...

The evolution of lethals in the t-haplotype system of the mouse

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Charlesworth, B, Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 258:101-107. 1994.
The evolution of lethal haplotypes in the t-haplotype segregation distortion system of Mus is examined by mathematical and computer models. The models assume that there is reproductive compensation for the loss of lethal embryos, such that the net reproductive success of a female ...

The peculiar journey of a selfish chromosome: Mouse t-haplotypes and meiotic drive

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Transmission distortion
Silver, LM, Trends in Genetics, 9:250-254. 1993.
Mouse t haplotypes are descendents of a variant form of chromosome 17 that evolved the ability to propagate itself at the expense of the wild-type homolog from heterozygous +/t males. Although once enigmatic, these widespread selfish chromosomes have revealed many of their ...

Evolution of the mouse t-haplotype – Recent and worldwide introgression to Mus musculus

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Morita, TK, H.; Murata, K.; Nozaki, M.; Delarbre, C.; Willison, K.; Satta, Y.; Sakaizumi, M.; Takahata, N.; Gachelin, G.; Matsushiro, A., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 89:6851-6855. 1992.
Mouse t haplotypes are variants of chromosome 17, consisting of four inversions. Despite the homozygous lethality and pleiotropic effect on embryonic development, sperm production, and recombination, they have widely spread in natural populations of the house mouse (10-40% in ...

Can transposable elements be used to drive disease refractoriness genes into vector populations?

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Modeling
M. G. Kidwell and J. M. C. Ribeiro, Parasitology Today, 8:325-329. 1992.
A number of biological procedures are currently being considered as alternatives to insecticide-based methods for the control of insect vectors of disease. Among these are the adaptation of various genetic mechanisms to drive genes of interest, such as refractoriness to malaria ...

A comparative approach to the population genetics theory of segregation distortion

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Transmission distortion, X chromosome
Feldman, MWO, Sarah P., American Naturalist, 137:443-456. 1991.
Mathematical models of four well-known naturally occurring systems of segregation distortion are compared. These include the sex-ratio chromosome of Drosophila pseudoobscura, the Segregation Distorter (SD) complex of D. melanogaster, the t locus in Mus musculus, and the sex-ratio ...

Meiotic drive of t-haplotypes – chromosome segregation in mice with tertiary trisomy

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Agulnik, AIA, S. I.; Ruvinsky, A. O., Genetical Research, 57:51-54. 1991.
The properties of the t haplotypes, specific mutant states of the proximal region of chromosomes 17 in the house mouse, are of continuing interest. One such property is increased transmission of the t haplotype by heterozygous t/+ males to offspring. Using the reciprocal ...

Meiotic drive of t haplotypes: chromosome segregation in mice with tertiary trisomy

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Rodents, Transmission distortion
Agulnik, AIA, Sergei I.; Ruvinsky, Anatoly O., Genetics Research, 57:51. 1991.
The properties of the / haplotypes, specific mutant states of the proximal region of chromosomes17 in the house mouse, are of continuing interest. One such property is increased transmission ofthe / haplotype by heterozygous // + males to offspring. Using ...

Segregation distorters

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Transmission distortion, X chromosome, Y-chromosome
Lyttle, TW, Annual Review of Genetics, 25:511-557. 1991.
Segregation distorters are genetic elements that exhibit the phenomenon of meiotic drive; that is, the mechanics of the meiotic divisions cause one member of a pair of heterozygous alleles or heteromorphic chromosomes to be transmitted to progeny in excess of the expected ...

The Genetic Basis of Transmission-Ratio Distortion and Male Sterility Due to the t Complex

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Lyon, MF, American Naturalist, 137:349-358. 1991.
The abnormal transmission ratios observed in male mice heterozygous for a complete t haplotype have been shown by breeding studies to be due to three or more distorter genes acting on a responder gene. The action of the t form of the responder is relatively resistant to this ...

Behavioral reduction in the transmission of deleterious t-haplotypes by wild house mice

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Lenington, SH, I. L., The American Naturalist, 137:366-378. 1991.
About 25% of wild house mice are heterozygous (+/t) for a variable recessive haplotype of the T locus. Although t haplotypes are highly deleterious when homozygous, they are maintained in wild mouse populations because they are associated with transmission-ratio distortion in ...

Molecular and chromosomal studies on the origin of t-haplotypes in mice

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Other mammals, Transmission distortion
Hammer, MF, American Naturalist, 137:359-365. 1991.
Mouse t haplotypes are variant forms of the proximal third of chromosome 17 that enhance their representation in the gene pool by means of a male-specific transmission-ratio distortion. As with other systems of meiotic drive, they are maintained as independent genetic entities by ...

Genetics-driving genes and chromosomes

Tags: Chromosomal drive, Ecology, Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive, Gene drive mechanisms, Gene drive synthetic, History, Replicator/site directed nuclease, Risk and safety, Toxin-antidote, Transmission distortion, Underdominance, X chromosome, Y-chromosome
Charlesworth, B, Nature, 332:394-395. 1988.
Thereare several genetic and chromosomal systems in which Mendel's first law - the equal probability of transmission of maternal and paternal alternative alleles or homologues - is violated. This phenomenon was named 'meiotic drive' in 1957 by Sandler and Novitski, who drew ...

Genetic-transformation of Drosophila with transposable element vectors

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene editing, Selfish genetic elements
G. M. Rubin and A. C. Spradling, Science, 218:348-353. 1982.
Exogenous DNA sequences were introduced into the Drosophila germ line. A rosy transposon (ry1), constructed by inserting a chromosomal DNA fragment containing the wild-type rosy gene into a P transposable element, transformed germ line cells in 20 to 50 percent of the injected ...

Genetic control of insect populations: I. Cage studies of chromosome replacement by compound autosomes in Drosophila melanogaste

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive synthetic, Genetic biocontrol, Genomics, History
M. Fitz-Earle, D. G. Holm and D. T. Suzuki, Genetics, 74:461-475. 1973.
A genetic method for insect control was evaluated using the test organism, Drosophila melanogaster. The technique involved the displacement under a system of continuous reproduction, of standard strains by those carrying compound autosomes. The eradication of the replacements ...

Analysis of a general population genetic model of meiotic drive

Tags: Evolution, Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, Other mammals
Hartl, DL, Evolution, 24:538-545. 1970.
The purpose of this article is to present the detailed solution of a model of meiotic drive which Lewontin (1968) has suggested would be helpful in understanding the evo- lutionary dynamics of the t-alleles in the house mouse. Because mice tend to breed in small endogamous family ...

Studies of the genetic variability in populations of wild house mice .2. Analysis of eight additional alleles at locus – T

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, History, Rodents, Toxin-antidote
L. C. Dunn, Genetics, 42:299-311. 1957.
1 Eight additional lethal alleles at locus T are described, each derived from a wild heterozygote in one of six different wild populations. 2. The frequency of heterozygotes appears to be high in most wild populations, possibly as high as 50 percent. 3. In two of the ...

Sur la reproduction des souris anoures

Tags: Fruit fly, Gene drive mechanisms, History, Rodents, Transmission distortion
N. Dobrovolskaia-Zavadskaia and N. Kobozieff, Comptes rendus des séances de la Société de biologie et de ses filiales, 97:116-119. 1927.
Nous ne connaissons que deux lignees de Souris sans queue, celle de Lang (1913), et cell de Duboscq (1922). L’elevange de Lang (lignee des Souris brachyures et anoures du preparateur Alfred Nageli) a donne 199 Souris normales, pour 173 brachyures et 9 anoures. Croisses entre ...