Keywords: Gene drive

For the Sake of 600,000 Children, Science Must Be Bold

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Laurie Zoloth,  The New York Times,  2024.
Bold ideas in science research used to thrill us; now they seem pretty threatening. When I have written about the ethics of genetically engineered mosquitoes to combat malaria, many of my friends have expressed alarm. “What if it goes badly wrong?” they ask. What if there are ...

Assessing the Efficacy of Gene-Drive Technology in Reducing Malaria Transmission in Sub-Saharan Africa: Current Progress and Future Prospects

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Bizimana Rukundo T.,  IAA Journal of Applied Sciences,  12(1):1-5. 2024.
Malaria continues to pose a significant public health challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa, necessitating innovative solutions to combat its transmission. This review examined the efficacy of gene-drive technology as a novel approach to reducing malaria transmission through genetic ...

Most advanced gene drive projects

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Gene Drive Monitor,  2024.
This infographic shows the species in which a gene drive has actually been built and is at least partially functional, up to 1 March 2024. Note that gene drives have been proposed in many more species, as shown our taxonomic list of targets here. Along with gene drives it ...

Exploring The Dynamics of Gene Drive Mosquitoes Within Wild Populations Using an Agent-Based Simulation

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S. Wickramasooriya, I. Mahmood, et al.,  IEEE Xplore,  2024.
Gene drive technology is emerging as a potentially powerful tool in combating vector-borne diseases – notably malaria. This study introduces an agent-based model (ABM) focused on the deployment of genetically engineered mosquitoes with gene drive (GEM) in Príncipe Island, ...

TWiV 1161: Baby you can drive my gene

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MicrobeTV,  YouTube,  2024.
TWiV reviews continuing expansion of poliovirus type 2, removal of influenza B/Yamagata from the vaccine, Nobel Prize for miRNAs, protective immune response with a adenovirus-associated virus vector expressing a computationally designed hemagglutinin, and viral gene drive during ...

GeneConvene Global Collaborative | Considerations for the First Field Trials of Gene Drive for Malaria

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GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  YouTube,  2024.
A webinar organized by the GeneConvene Global Collaborative discussed the potential first field trials of gene drive technology for malaria control. This genetic modification approach aims to alter mosquito populations to reduce their ability to transmit malaria. While laboratory ...

Navigating biosafety regulatory frameworks for genetic engineering in Africa: a focus on genome editing and gene drive technologies

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Tilahun Rabuma, Felix Moronta-Barrios, Wendy Craig,  Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology,  12. 2024.
Genome editing and gene drive technologies are increasingly gaining attraction in Africa, with researchers exploring their potential applications in agriculture, health and the environment. Acknowledging that robust regulatory frameworks are crucial in facilitating the ...

Engineering Resilient Gene Drives Towards Sustainable Malaria Control: Predicting, Testing and Overcoming Target Site Resistance

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Ioanna Morianou, Lee Phillimore, Bhavin S. Khatri,,  bioRxiv,  2024.
CRISPR-based gene drives are selfish genetic elements with the potential to spread through entire insect populations for sustainable vector control. Gene drives designed to disrupt the reproductive capacity of females can suppress laboratory populations of the malaria mosquito. ...

Parental-effect gene-drive elements under partial selfing, or why do Caenorhabditis genomes have hyperdivergent regions?

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Matthew V Rockman,  Genetics,  2024.
Self-fertile Caenorhabditis nematodes carry a surprising number of Medea elements, alleles that act in heterozygous mothers and cause death or developmental delay in offspring that don’t inherit them. At some loci, both alleles in a cross operate as independent Medeas, ...

Using genomics to find solutions to malaria

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Morgan Morris,  Nature Africa,  2024.
Joel Odero’s experiences of malaria is wide and deep. Growing up in a village in Kenya, he not only contracted the disease numerous times, but was all too familiar with the relentless daily regimen of spraying insecticides and checking malaria nets were not ripped. Decades ...

The potential of gene drives in malaria vector species to control malaria in African environments

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Hancock, P.A., North, A., Leach, A.W. et al.,  Nature Communications,  15. 2024.
Gene drives are a promising means of malaria control with the potential to cause sustained reductions in transmission. In real environments, however, their impacts will depend on local ecological and epidemiological factors. We develop a data-driven model to investigate the ...

Practical Application of a Relationship-Based Model to Engagement for Gene-Drive Vector Control Programs

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Ana Kormos, Lodney Nazaré, Adionilde Aguiar dos Santos, and Gregory C. Lanzaro,  The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene,  111:341-360. 2024.
Engagement is an important component in the advancement of gene-drive vector control research programs as developers look to transition the technology from the laboratory to the field. As research advances and engagement surrounding this novel technology is put into practice, ...

Why are gene drive technologies being considered to help restore biodiversity on islands?

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Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research,  2024.
Researchers have been studying how to harness gene drives to solve some of society’s most intractable problems for a long time. Public health and ecosystem conservation are two of the main areas where research has focused, although other uses are also possible.

A viral gene drive could offer a new approach to fighting herpes

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Meghan Rosen,  ScienceNews,  2024.
The words “herpes” and “spread” in the same sentence don’t typically spell good news. Unless, that is, you’re talking about a busybody new virus. That virus includes designer DNA called a gene drive that spreads from one herpes simplex virus to another. And it may be ...

Professor Abdoulaye Diabaté’s frank conversation with Bill Gates

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African Media Agency,  2024.
On October 2, 2024, Professor Abdoulaye Diabaté, a prominent figure in malaria research and Head of Medical Entomology at Burkina Faso’s Research Institute in Health Sciences, gained international attention by appearing in the Netflix documentary series "What’s Next? The ...

Gene Drive and Symbiont Technologies for Control of Mosquito-Borne Diseases

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Guan-Hong Wang, Ary Hoffmann, and Jackson Champer,  Annual Review of Entomology,  70. 2024.
Mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue and malaria, pose a significant burden to global health. Current control strategies with insecticides are only moderately effective. Scalable solutions are needed to reduce the transmission risk of these diseases. Symbionts and genome ...

Assessment of drive efficiency and resistance allele formation of a homing gene drive in the mosquito Aedes aegypti

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Xiaozhen Yang, Xuejiao Xu, et al.,  bioRxiv,  2024.
Aedes aegypti, known for transmitting viruses such as dengue, zika, and yellow fever, poses a significant public health threat. Conventional insecticides give rise to a range of issues, including ecological contamination and insect resistance. Hence, there is a pressing demand ...

The ultra-selfish gene

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Mathias Kirk Bonde,  Works in Progress,  2024.
Almost every cell in our bodies contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, which are packages of the DNA and genes that provide the code for producing living things. Sperm and egg cells, however, each contain only one set of chromosomes. This set of chromosomes has been recombined from ...

Viral gene drive spread during herpes simplex virus 1 infection in mice

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Walter, M., Haick, A.K., Riley, R. et al.,  Nature Communications,  15. 2024.
Gene drives are genetic modifications designed to propagate efficiently through a population. Most applications rely on homologous recombination during sexual reproduction in diploid organisms such as insects, but we recently developed a gene drive in herpesviruses that relies on ...

Overcoming drug-resistant tumors with selection gene drives

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Hui Wang, Mingqi Xie,  Cell Genomics,  4. 2024.
Drug resistance is a major hurdle prohibiting effective treatment of many diseases, including cancer. Using model-guided designs, Leighow et al.1 engineered a dual-switch selection gene drive system custom designed to combat drug-resistant tumors. By demonstrating remarkable ...

Deployment of tethered gene drive for confined suppression in continuous space requires avoiding drive wave interference

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Ruobing Feng, Jackson Champer,  Molecular Ecology,  33. 2024.
Gene drives have great potential for suppression of pest populations and removal of exotic invasive species. CRISPR homing suppression drive is a powerful but unconfined drive, posing risks of uncontrolled spread. Thus, developing methods for confining a gene drive is of great ...

Understanding gene flow and its implications for gene drive research

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Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research,  2024.
Gene flow is the transfer of genetic information from one population to another. Also known as gene transfer or gene migration, it plays a crucial role in the evolution and adaptation of species. Understanding the dynamics of gene flow is essential to assess the potential risks ...

A model-informed target product profile for population modification gene drives for malaria control

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Agastya Mondal, Héctor M. Sánchez C., John M. Marshall,  medRxiv,  2024.
As reductions in malaria transmission in sub-Saharan Africa stagnate, gene drive-modified mosquitoes represent one of the most promising novel tools for continued disease control. In order to advance from the laboratory to the field, gene drives will be assessed against target ...

Advancements and Future Prospects of CRISPR-Cas-Based Population Replacement Strategies in Insect Pest Management

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Zhao Y, Li L, Wei L, Wang Y, Han Z.,  Insects,  15. 2024.
Many insects are categorized as agricultural pests due to their ability to transmit diseases and damage crops, which results in significant economic losses. Scientists have proposed two main pest control strategies: population suppression, aimed at reducing the size or ...

World Mosquito Day: Gene Drives and CRISPR Technology

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Public Health On Call,  YouTube,  2024.
About this episode: World Mosquito Day, observed annually on August 20th, commemorates British doctor Sir Ronald Ross's discovery in 1897 that female Anopheles mosquitoes transmit malaria to humans. More than a century later, major advancements like genetically modifying ...

Population dynamics in spatial suppression gene drive models and the effect of resistance, density dependence, and life history

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Xinyue Zhang, Weitang Sun, Isabel K. Kim, Philipp W. Messer, Jackson Champer,  bioRxiv,  2024.
Due to their super-Mendelian inheritance, gene drive systems have the potential to provide revolutionary solutions to critical public health and environmental problems. For suppression drives, however, spatial structure can cause “chasing” population dynamics that may ...

Generating and testing the efficacy of reagents for CRISPR/Cas9 homology directed repair-based manipulations in Tribolium

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Hannah C Markley, Kennedy J Helms, Megan Maar, Gabriel E Zentner, Michael J Wade, Andrew C Zelhof,  Journal of Insect Science,  24. 2024.
CRISPR/Cas9 manipulations are possible in many insects and ever expanding. Nonetheless, success in one species and techniques developed for it are not necessarily applicable to other species. As such, the development and expansion of CRISPR-based (clustered regularly interspaced ...

Scientists’ novel technology to conserve mosquitoes

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Milliam Murigi,  People Daily,  2024.
As the world celebrates World Mosquito Day today, scientists have introduced a revolutionary technology that could conserve mosquitoes instead of killing them while eliminating some of the diseases transmitted by mosquitos. Known as gene drive technology, this innovative ...

Gene Drives Shown to Work in Wild Plants. They Could Wipe Out Weeds.

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Shelly Fan,  Singularity Hub,  2024.
Henry Grabar has had enough battling knotweed. All he wanted was to build a small garden in Brooklyn—a bit of peace amid the cacophony of city life. But a plant with beet-red leaves soon took over his nascent garden. The fastest growing plant he’d ever seen, it could sprout ...

FILMS: Gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control

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Sarah Hartley and Tom Law,  Gene Drive Governance,  2024.
Gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control is a short documentary film that is beautifully shot in Uganda and explores Ugandan stakeholders’ hopes for gene drive mosquitoes – a radical new tool that offers a way to eliminate or change the mosquitoes that cause malaria. Uganda ...

Assessing CRISPR/Cas9 potential in SDG3 attainment: malaria elimination—regulatory and community engagement landscape

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Snuzik, A.,  Malaria Journal,  23. 2024.
Elimination of malaria has become a United Nations member states target: Target 3.3 of the sustainable development goal no. 3 (SDG3). Despite the measures taken, the attainment of this goal is jeopardized by an alarming trend of increasing malaria case incidence. Globally, there ...

99% gene transmission possible, China’s CRISPR tool boosts food security

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Gairika Mitra,  Interesting Engineering,  2024.
Chinese scientists have engineered a solution by which they could bypass natural plant gene inheritance. They aim to deploy a CRISPR-based gene editing system to help the transmission of preferred genes even when they aren’t suitable for a plant.  The scientists devised a ...

No Such Thing as Containment? Gene Drives for Conservation and the (Im)possibility of an Island

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Boersma, K., Bovenkerk, B. and Ludwig, D.,  Philosophy and Technology,  37:75. 2024.
This article explores the use of islands as tools of geographical and intellectual containment - or what we call “islanding” - in the scientific and policy literature about gene drive technologies in conservation. In the first part of the article, we explore the narrative of ...

Modeling the Evolution of S. pombe Populations with Multiple Killer Meiotic Drivers

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José Fabricio López Hernández, Boris Y Rubinstein, Robert L Unckless, Sarah E Zanders,  G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics,  2024.
Meiotic drivers are selfish genetic loci that can be transmitted to more than half of the viable gametes produced by a heterozygote. This biased transmission gives meiotic drivers an evolutionary advantage that can allow them to spread over generations until all members of a ...

A New CRISPR-Driven Technology for Gene Drive in Plants

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Lori Dajose,  CalTech,  2024.
Spreading a specific genetic trait through a population, even if that trait does not benefit those who carry it, is the purpose of a "gene drive." Gene drives can be used for many different applications. These are divided into two broad categories: population modification and ...

First synthetic gene drive for plants could help eradicate weeds

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Erik Stokstad,  Science,  2024.
More than a decade ago, a research group used the genome editor CRISPR to put evolution on fast forward, spurring a gene to spread throughout a population of lab-reared fruit flies many times faster than it normally could in nature. Mosquitoes with CRISPR-based “gene drives” ...

Mosquito population structure and gene-drive

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Heredity Podcast,  2024.
Gene-drives hold great potential for the control of biological pests, but first they need to be thoroughly tested under appropriate conditions. In this episode we discuss some new work assessing whether mosquito populations in Northern Australia could be used to test a gene-drive ...

Where gene drive fits into WHO’s new Global Malaria Programme operational strategy

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Mouhamed Drabo,  Target Malaria,  2024.
On the 23rd of April 2024, WHO published an updated operational strategy for its Global Malaria Programme for the years 2024-2030. The Global Malaria Programme was initially guided by a strategy intended to cover the years 2016-2030, which served as a framework and guide for ...

Gene drive mosquitoes designed to eliminate malaria – but governance is complex, new film shows

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Russell Parton,  University of Exeter,  2024.
A radical new biotechnology could eliminate the mosquitoes that cause malaria, but in Uganda – where malaria is the leading cause of death – a lack of information and debate is undermining public debate on the issue. Professor Sarah Hartley’s new research documentary ...

A small-molecule approach to restore female sterility phenotype targeted by a homing suppression gene drive in the fruit pest Drosophila suzukii

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Ma S, Ni X, Chen S, Qiao X, Xu X, Chen W, et al.,  PLoS Genetics,  2024.
CRISPR-based gene drives offer promising prospects for controlling disease-transmitting vectors and agricultural pests. A significant challenge for successful suppression-type drive is the rapid evolution of resistance alleles. One approach to mitigate the development of ...

Genetically modified mosquitoes could one day end malaria

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Alexis Akwagyiram,  Semafor,  2024.
Abdoulaye Diabaté, a scientist from Burkina Faso, is at the vanguard of efforts to eliminate malaria by editing the genetic makeup of male mosquitoes and releasing them in the wild to prevent the reproduction of female mosquito species that transmit malaria. The technique is ...

Group trains Nigerian journalists on “gene drives” controversies

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Tosin Omoniyi,  Premium Times,  2024.
The Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI) held a training for Nigerian journalists on the controversies surrounding the ‘gene drives’ research organisations that allegedly target Africans as “guinea pigs.” The training, the organisers said, was aimed at equipping ...

Genetic and geographic population structure in the malaria vector, Anopheles farauti, provides a candidate system for pioneering confinable gene-drive releases

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Ambrose, L., Allen, S.L., Iro’ofa, C. et al.,  Heredity,  2024.
Indoor insecticide applications are the primary tool for reducing malaria transmission in the Solomon Archipelago, a region where Anopheles farauti is the only common malaria vector. Due to the evolution of behavioural resistance in some An. farauti populations, these ...

Talking About Gene Drive in Uganda: The Need for Science Communication to Underpin Engagement

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Hartley, S., Stelmach, A., Opesen, C., Openjuru, G. L., and Neema, S.,  Science Communication,  2024.
Uganda may host the world’s first field trials of gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control. Global North discourses pre-suppose African publics have access to information about gene drive and are ready to make decisions about its governance. We explore assumptions about the ...

The organizational structure of global gene drive research

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Florian Rabitz,  Global Environmental Change,  84. 2024.
Gene drives are a proposed method for large-scale in situ genetic engineering.

Scientism, trust, value alignment, views of nature, and U.S. public opinion about gene drive mosquitos

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Evans, J. H., & Schairer, C. E.,  Public Understanding of Science,  2024.
Gene drive could be a powerful tool for addressing problems of conservation, agriculture, and human health caused by insect and animal pests but is likely to be controversial as it involves the release of genetically modified organisms. This study examined the social determinants ...

Flight Against Infections: The Role of Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes, with Dr. Stephanie James

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EeKs on Health,  YouTube,  2024.
In this episode of Causes or Cures, Dr. Eeks chats with Dr. Stephanie James about the potential use of genetically modified mosquitoes (GMMs) to fight diseases that mosquitoes carry and spread, such as Malaria and Dengue Fever. In the podcast, Dr. James provides an overview ...

CRISPR could eradicate horrific parasite that’s killing cattle

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Kristin Houser,  Freethink,  2024.
Uruguay is developing a CRISPR gene drive to eradicate the New World screwworm, a parasitic fly that kills cattle in a painful, grisly fashion. Releasing it into the wild would have risks, but if it works, it could help rid South America of this horrific agricultural pest. The ...

Un1Cas12f1 and Cas9 gene drive in HSV1: viruses that ‘infect’ viruses

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Qiaorui Yao, Zhuangjie Lin, Keyuan Lai, Xianying Zeng, Guanxiong Lei, Tongwen Zhang, Hongsheng Dai,  bioRxiv,  2024.
Synthetic CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive has been developed as a potential tool to control harmful species. However, Cas9 gene drive faces high resistance rate and mitigation strategies developed so far are difficult to implement. Furthermore, studying the resistance to gene drive is ...

Gene Drive Systems To Control Aedes Aegypti Mosquitoes Make Headway

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Joshua Ang,  Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research,  2024.
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are known vectors of several diseases, including dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, and Zika, which impact millions of people worldwide each year. The effectiveness of existing insecticide-based methods to control this mosquito is threatened by growing ...

Uruguay wants to use gene drives to eradicate devastating screwworms

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Abdullahi Tsanni,  MIT Technology Review,  2024.
On a warm, sunny day in Montevideo, Uruguay, the air is smogless and crisp. Inside a highly secured facility at the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) are a sophisticated gene gun, giant microscopes, and tens of thousands of gene-edited flies, their bright blue ...

Taking the fight against disease to mosquitoes

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Gregory Devine,  Setopati,  2024.
In the medium term it's likely that suppression strategies involving self-limiting genetic modifications, Wolbachia infection and irradiation will be extended to a small number of our most important mosquito vectors of disease.

“Mozzie Drive” Card Game rules

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Katie Willis, Ace North,  Target Malaria,  2024.
Mozzie Drive is an educational card game that demonstrates how gene drive technology could be used to reduce populations of malaria mosquitoes. To download the game for free, please visit: https://targetmalaria.org/why-malaria... . This game was designed by Dr. Katie Willis ...

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

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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 ...

Biotech Mosquitoes Can Help to Regain Ground in Fight Against Malaria

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Florence Banoba,  East News,  2024.
In response to the recent opinion articles that ran in the National print and online media in the last couple of days (1st and 5th February, 2024), regarding the use of GMO technology as a tool in the fight against malaria, I wish to address the writer’s broad-brush dismissal ...

SPOTLIGHT: Gene Drives for Malaria Elimination in Africa

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Ifakara Health Institute,  YouTube,  2024.
This SPOTLIGHT Series features Dr. Marceline Finda, a distinguished Research Scientist at Ifakara Health Institute. The insightful 20-minute discussion centered around the topic: "Gene Drives for Malaria Elimination in Africa."

Off the news: Gene-altered mosquitoes to the rescue

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Star Advertiser,  2024.
A legal attempt to block deployment of genetically modified mosquitoes in a Maui forest was rejected in Circuit Court on Tuesday — cause for celebration among those hoping to save near-extinct species of Hawaiian honeycreepers. State and federal wildlife officials plan a staged ...

Opinion: A cautionary tale of experimenting with genetically modified mosquitoes in Uganda

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Barbara Ntambirweki,  The Independent,  2024.
The Uganda Virus Research Institute is pressing forward with gene drive technology which provides a way to rapidly, permanently, and genetically modify wild animals or plants. Gene drive organisms, are a genetically modified organism (GMO) designed to spread a genetic ...

Revolutionary Gene Drive Could Provide Solution for Agricultural Pest Control

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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 ...

Otago GE Wasp Project Violates International Gene Drive Agreement

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GE-Free NZ,  Scoop,  2024.
Professor Dearden, Otago University, has received $11 million from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE) to engineer wasps using gene drive technology. He is only consulting with Māori and regulators, ignoring and side-lining the views of other concerned New ...

Gene driver flies and quantum finance: News from Imperial

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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 ...

Transforming malaria prevention and control: the prospects and challenges of gene drive technology for mosquito management

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Yusuf Amuda Tajudeen, Habeebullah Jayeola Oladipo, Iyiola Olatunji Oladunjoye, Muhammad Kamaldeen Oladipo, Hameedat Damilola Shittu, Imam-Fulani Abdulmumeen, Abdullateef Opeyemi Afolabi and Mona Said El-Sherbini,  Annals of Medicine,  55. 2024.
In the era of insecticides and anti-malarial drug resistance, gene drive technology holds considerable promise for malaria control. Gene drive technology deploys genetic modifications into mosquito populations to impede their ability to transmit the malaria parasite. This can be ...

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

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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 ...

Gene drive and genetic sex conversion in the global agricultural pest Ceratitis capitata

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Meccariello, A., Hou, S., Davydova, S. et al.,  Nature Communications,  15:372. 2024.
Homing-based gene drives are recently proposed interventions promising the area-wide, species-specific genetic control of harmful insect populations. Here we characterise a first set of gene drives in a tephritid agricultural pest species, the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis ...

Gene Drives: Mechanisms and Key Research, Explained

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Julia Bauman,  60 Second Science,  2024.
A technical primer on CRISPR-based gene drives, which hold massive potential for mitigating the harms invoked by some species. We cover what a gene drive is, how it works at the genetic level, and summarize key safety & efficiency features developed in recent years.

Consultation on a draft National Gene Drive Policy Guide

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Commonwealth of Australia (Department of Health and Aged Care),  National Gene Technology Scheme,  2024.
The term gene drive is used to describe organisms which have been genetically modified to increase the rate for a particular trait to spread through a sexually reproducing population, spreading the genes or traits through a species at a faster rate than normal inheritance. ...

CRISPR engineered viruses could render other viruses harmless

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Michael Le Page,  New Scientist,  2023.
A virus genetically engineered to spread its DNA to other viruses via CRISPR gene editing has done exactly that in tests in mice. The hope is that these viruses could alter others, such as herpes, in a way that prevents them from causing symptoms. “It’s a new technology,” ...

Gene drives, mosquitoes, and ecosystems: An interdisciplinary approach to emerging ethical concerns

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Ricardo D. Moreno, Luca Valera, Cristián Borgoño, Juan Carlos Castilla, José Luis Riveros,  Frontiers in Environmental Science,  11. 2023.
Gene drives are genetic elements that in sexually reproducing organisms spread faster than those transmitted through a Mendelian fashion. Since gene drives can be engineered to modify different aspects of physiology and reproduction, they have been proposed as a new and ...

Advancements in Gene Editing: Using CRISPR-Cas9 and Gene Drive Technology to Neutralize Viruses

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Anonymous,  News Directory 3,  2023.
Researchers from the US Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center recently published research results in the international academic journal “Nature” demonstrating that herpes virus type 1 (HSV-1) was neutralized using “Gene Drive” technology . Gene drive refers to a ...

Communicating Creatively About Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

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Lorraine Gibson,  Target Malaria,  2023.
In 2018, the Target Malaria team at Imperial College London published a  landmark paper  in Nature Biotechnology. The study demonstrated how gene drive mosquitoes successfully suppressed a population of wild-type malaria mosquitoes, marking a significant milestone for gene ...

African scientist could wipe out malaria by editing mosquito DNA

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Nimi Princewill,  CNN,  2023.
Malaria is a leading cause of death in Burkina Faso, where nearly all of the West African nation’s 22 million inhabitants, especially children, are at risk of the disease, according to the World Health Organization. Malaria killed nearly 19,000 people in Burkina Faso in 2021, ...

To End Malaria In Africa, a Scientist From Africa Invented Gene Drive Technology.

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Salman Ahmad,  CTN News,  2023.
Abdoulaye Diabate, a scientist from Africa, is currently working on a groundbreaking technology called ‘gene drive’ that has the potential to eradicate malaria or the mosquitoes that cause it from the continent. Diabate, who received the prestigious 2023 Falling Walls Prize ...

Gene Drive: Engineered viruses take on their own kind in a new study

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Rizwan Choudhury,  Interesting Engineering,  2023.
Scientists are exploring a radical idea to combat viral infections: use viruses against themselves. They are testing whether introducing modified viruses into people with the same natural viruses can spread a gene that destroys the infection. This has yet to be done successfully ...

Gene Drive Technology Unlocks Innovative Potential Solutions At The Intersection Of Climate Change And Public Health

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Krystal Birungi,  African Media Agency,  2023.
The inaugural ‘Day of Health’ at the UN Climate Conference (COP-28) highlighted the dramatic impact of climate change on health, diseases and in particular on malaria. Heads of State and climate experts converged in Dubai to emphasise the indisputable link between climate ...

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

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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 ...

Transformative Approaches for Sustainable Weed Management: The Power of Gene Drive and CRISPR-Cas9

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Kumam, Y.; Trick, H.N.; Vara Prasad, P.V.; Jugulam, M.,  Genes,  14. 2023.
Weeds can negatively impact crop yields and the ecosystem’s health. While many weed management strategies have been developed and deployed, there is a greater need for the development of sustainable methods for employing integrated weed management. Gene drive systems can be ...

Viruses that ‘infect’ viruses: Cas12f1 and Cas9 gene drive in HSV1

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Hongsheng Dai, Qiaorui Yao, Zhuangjie Lin, Keyuan Lai, Xianyin Zeng, Guangxiong Lei, Tongwen Zhang,  bioRxiv,  2023.
Cas9-based synthetic gene drives constitute some minimal elements capable of editing DNA with sequence specificity. However, they face high resistance rate and mitigation strategies developed so far are difficult to implement. Here, we engineered herpes simplex virus type 1 ...

A homing rescue gene drive with multiplexed gRNAs reaches high frequency in cage populations but generates functional resistance

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Jingheng Chen, Shibo Hou, Ruobing Feng, Xuejiao Xu, Nan Liang, Jackson Champer,  bioRxiv,  2023.
CRISPR homing gene drive is a potent technology with considerable potential for managing populations of medically and agriculturally significant insects. It induces a bias in the inheritance of the drive allele in progeny, rapidly spreading desired genes throughout the ...

ISAAA Inc. | Genetic Tools For Conservation and Health: What’s The Role of Gene Drives?

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Kristine Grace N. Tome,  Science Speaks,  2023.
ISAAA Inc., in partnership with the Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research and the Malaysian Biotechnology Information Centre (MABIC), gathered approximately 834 online participants during the webinar Genetic Tools for Conservation and Health: What's the Role of Gene Drives? ...

Invasive Feral Cats Could Be Wiped Out Using Genetic Modification

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Jess Thomson,  Newsweek,  2023.
Hordes of feral cats terrorizing native species in Australia could be combatted using a special type of genetic engineering, scientists have suggested. The cats, which came to Australia via European colonizers, regularly kill native mammals, birds, and reptiles, including ...

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

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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 ...

Manipulating the Destiny of Wild Populations Using CRISPR

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Raban R, Marshall JM, Hay BA, Akbari OS.,  Annual Reviews,  57:361-390. 2023.
Genetic biocontrol aims to suppress or modify populations of species to protect public health, agriculture, and biodiversity. Advancements in genome engineering technologies have fueled a surge in research in this field, with one gene editing technology, CRISPR, leading the ...

What are gene drives, and how can they help eradicate invasive species in Australia?

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Dr. Ellen Cottingham,  ABC News (Australia Broadcasting Corporation),  2023.
The impact of feral cats and other invasive species is felt across Australia. Not only do they threaten native species, but they can also spread diseases to humans and livestock. Invasive species are estimated to cost Australia an eye-watering $25 billion annually, while the ...

Repeat mediated excision of gene drive elements for restoring wild-type populations

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Pratima R Chennuri, Josef Zapletal, Raquel D Monfardini, Martial Loth Ndeffo-Mbah, Zach N Adelman, Kevin M Myles,  bioRxiv,  2023.
We demonstrate here that single strand annealing (SSA) repair can be co-opted for the precise autocatalytic excision of a drive element. Although SSA is not the predominant form of DNA repair in eukaryotic organisms, we increased the likelihood of its use by engineering direct ...

Mosquito modification programme aiming to eliminate malaria receives US$15m

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Hayley Dunning,  Imperial College London,  2023.
Half of the world’s population is at risk of contracting malaria, a disease caused by parasites that are transmitted from one person to another through bites from Anopheles mosquitoes. In 2021 alone, there were over 247 million cases and 619,000 deaths from malaria, mostly ...

Transformative Novel Technologies and Global Environmental Governance

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F. Rabitz,  Cambridge University Press,  2023.
Transformative Novel Technologies are potential gamechangers for confronting climate change, biodiversity loss, and many other elements of the global environmental crisis, allowing us to achieve a more sustainable future. The contemporary and future international governance of ...

Gene Drive Mosquitoes from Islamic Perspective: A Preliminary Discussion

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N. M. Isa,  Global Journal Al-Thaqafah,  13. 2023.
Gene drive mosquitoes could spread desired trait, such as female infertility within a wild population at a rate higher than the normal inheritance rate and could eventually wipe out the population. Consequently, this makes gene drive mosquitoes one of the promising approaches in ...

What are gene drives?

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Anonymous,  MalariaGEN,  2023.
Among the new generation of technological tools being developed to combat malaria, there is a lot of buzz around gene drives. This is a method for genetically modifying malaria-spreading mosquitoes and ultimately reducing or replacing their populations. But how exactly do gene ...

Generating and testing reagents for CRISPR/Cas9 based homologous recombination and gene drive in Tribolium

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C. M. Hannah, J. H. Kennedy, M. Megan, E. Z. Gabriel, W. Michael and Z. Andrew,  bioRxiv,  2023.11.07.566100. 2023.
CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive systems are possible in a few insects and ever expanding. Nonetheless, success in one species and techniques developed for it are not necessarily applicable to other species. As such, the development and expansion of gene drive systems is dependent upon ...

Current Status of the Main Olive Pests: Useful Integrated Pest Management Strategies and Genetic Tools

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E. Lantero, B. Matallanas and C. Callejas,  Applied Sciences,  13. 2023.
Mediterranean olive cultivation faces challenges in the global environmental change context. Pests and diseases caused by arthropods such as Bactrocera oleae, Prays oleae, and certain vectors of Xylella fastidiosa are expected to increase and spread in part due to this global ...

Research breakthrough in genetic biocontrol striving to transform pest management: Centre for Invasive Species Solutions

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ARR News,  Australian Rural and Regional News,  2023.
A potential new non-lethal and ethical approach to control invasive mammal pests was showcased at a briefing held at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide on Tuesday 31 October. Hosted by the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions and the ...

Bill Gates Talks Gene Drives, mRNA, and U.S.$40m in Science Funding

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N. Mlambo,  allAfrica,  2023.
In 2003, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Grand Challenges initiative in order to find scientific solutions to these health challenges. Initially, the initiative focused on 14 scientific challenges including focusing on creating effective single-dose vaccines ...

Genetic tools for conservation and health: What’s the Role of Gene Drive?

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ISAAA,  Institute of Agricultural Science for Southern Viet Nam,  2023.
The potential uses and impacts of gene drive technologies have garnered increasing interest at the international and national levels across the world. As part of the effort to contribute to an informed debate around gene drive technologies, the Outreach Network for Gene Drive ...

Conceptual risk assessment of mosquito population modification gene-drive systems to control malaria transmission: preliminary hazards list workshops

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A. Kormos, G. Dimopoulos, E. Bier, G. C. Lanzaro, J. M. Marshall and A. A. James,  Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology,  11. 2023.
The field-testing and eventual adoption of genetically-engineered mosquitoes (GEMs) to control vector-borne pathogen transmission will require them meeting safety criteria specified by regulatory authorities in regions where the technology is being considered for use and other ...

General science-technology orientation, specific benefit–risk assessment frame, and public acceptance of gene drive biotechnology

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X. Liu, C. L. Goldsmith, K. E. Kang, A. Vedlitz, Z. N. Adelman, L. W. Buchman, E. Heitman and R. F. Medina,  Risk Analysis,  2023.
Abstract With limited understanding of most new biotechnologies, how do citizens form their opinion and what factors influence their attitudes about these innovations? In this study, we use gene drive biotechnology in agricultural pest management as an example and theoretically ...

Incorporating ecology into gene drive modelling

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J. Kim, K. D. Harris, I. K. Kim, S. Shemesh, P. W. Messer and G. Greenbaum,  Ecology Letters,  26:S62-S80. 2023.
Abstract Gene drive technology, in which fast-spreading engineered drive alleles are introduced into wild populations, represents a promising new tool in the fight against vector-borne diseases, agricultural pests and invasive species. Due to the risks involved, gene drives have ...

Benefits and risks of gene drives for invasive plant management – the case for common tansy

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L. Croghan, A. G. Smith, M. A. Tancos, N. O. Anderson and R. L. Becker,  Frontiers in Agronomy,  5. 2023.
Invasive plants cause significant environmental and economic damage, but land managers have few control options. Common tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) is prevalent in many US states and is one of the most reported invasive plants in Minnesota. Controlling common tansy poses a ...

How to fight insects that transmit diseases to people without harming those who cannot?

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Nation World News Desk,  Nation World,  2023.
One way to avoid this severe environmental impact is to specifically control the population of species that cause problems. This can be done chemically by releasing hormones into the environment that prevent passage to the adult stage, or pheromones that make them believe that a ...

Gene drive in plants emerges from infancy

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M. J. A. Awan, R. Z. Naqvi, I. Amin and S. Mansoor,  Trends in Plant Science,  2023.
Selfish genetic elements (SGEs) display biased transmission to offspring. However, their breeding potential has remained obscure. Wang et al. recently reported a natural gene-drive system that can be harnessed to prevent hybrid incompatibility and to develop a synthetic ...

Cleave and Rescue gamete killers create conditions for gene drive in plants

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O. Georg, L. J. Michelle, I. Tobin and A. H. Bruce,  bioRxiv,  2023.10.13.562303. 2023.
Gene drive elements promote the spread of linked traits, even when their presence confers a fitness cost to carriers, and can be used to change the composition or fate of wild populations. Cleave and Rescue (ClvR) drive elements sit at a fixed chromosomal position and include a ...

Overriding Mendelian inheritance in Arabidopsis with a CRISPR toxin-antidote gene drive that impairs pollen germination

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L. Yang, J. Bingke, C. Jackson and Q. Wenfeng,  bioRxiv,  2023.10.10.561637. 2023.
Synthetic gene drives, inspired by natural selfish genetic elements, present transformative potential for disseminating traits that benefit humans throughout wild populations, irrespective of potential fitness costs. Here, we constructed a gene drive system called CRISPR-Assisted ...

This Burkinabe researcher wants his groundbreaking work to wipe out malaria, altogether

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B. Orucho and M. Ndengar,  The African Mirror,  2023.
ABDOULAYE Diabaté and his team are betting on gene technology to protect children like his own from malaria. Along with a clutch of brand-new vaccines, the technology could help the world end malaria for good.

Genetically modified mosquitoes will be ready by 2033 – scientists

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D. Sekayinga,  MONITOR,  2023.
The Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVR[) has announced that genetically modified mosquitoes will be ready within a decade. Gene-drive mosquitoes are among the anti-malarial strategies the government under the Africa Target Malaria project has embarked on since 2016, to reduce ...

Expansions to the MGDrivE suite for simulating the efficacy of novel gene-drive constructs in the control of mosquito-borne diseases

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J. B. Bennett, S. L. Wu, P. R. Chennuri, K. M. Myles and M. L. Ndeffo-Mbah,  BMC Research Notes,  16:258. 2023.
The MGDrivE (MGDrivE 1 and MGDrivE 2) modeling framework provides a flexible and expansive environment for testing the efficacy of novel gene-drive constructs for the control of mosquito-borne diseases. However, the existing model framework did not previously support several ...

Mosquito Embryo Microinjection

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R. A. Harrell,  Cold Spring Harbor Protocols,  2023.
Genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes are an important tool in the fight against mosquito-borne disease, both indirectly through their use in research investigating host–pathogen interaction, mosquito olfaction, and anthropomorphic behavior and in future direct uses for ...

Situating the social sciences in responsible innovation in the global south: the case of gene drive mosquitoes

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K. Ledingham, C. Opesen, S. Hartley and S. Neema,  Journal of Responsible Innovation,  10:2264100. 2023.
There has been growing attention in recent years on the potential reconfiguration of responsible innovation (RI) to increase its relevance for global challenges in the Global South. This reconfiguration will require a broad and empowered role for social scientists. Yet RI has ...

The Gamble: Can Genetically Modified Mosquitoes End Disease?

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S. Nolen,  New York Times,  2023.
The malaria situation in São Tomé and Príncipe, an African island nation with a population of 200,000, epitomizes the current challenge in the global struggle against the disease. The country is among the world’s least developed, and it has depended on foreign aid to fight ...

Engineered and natural gene drives: mechanistically the same, yet not same in kind

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R. F. Medina and J. Kuzma,  Nature Communications,  14:5994. 2023.
We propose the use of the terms natural gene drive (NGD) and engineered gene drive (EGD) arguing against James et al.1, who think both should be included within the term “gene drive”, based on their mechanistic similarities. Thanks to CRISPR-Cas-based gene editing, engineered ...

Could a new gene-editing technique be a major breakthrough in the battle against malaria?

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B. Cottam,  GEOGRAPHICAL,  2023.
The idea is that since female mosquitoes typically only mate once, the mass release of the sterile male mosquitoes should prevent wild females from producing future generations. Insect populations can and have already been successfully suppressed by the release of sterilised ...

Quantifying Fitness Costs in Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes

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

MGDrivE 3: A decoupled vector-human framework for epidemiological simulation of mosquito genetic control tools and their surveillance

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A. Mondal, C. H. M. Sanchez and J. M. Marshall,  bioRxiv,  2023.09.09.556958. 2023.
We present MGDrivE 3 (Mosquito Gene Drive Explorer 3), a new version of a previously-developed framework, MGDrivE 2, that investigates the spatial population dynamics of mosquito genetic control systems and their epidemiological implications. The new framework incorporates three ...

A migration-selection model in genetic engineering

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Y. Qi and L. Su,  Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications,  75:103983. 2023.
We investigate a migration-selection system arising from CRISPR-Cas9 genetic engineering, which describes the evolution of the frequencies of a wild allele O, a drive allele D, and a brake allele B. The purpose is to see whether the drive allele D can persist in the population ...

Gene drives for invasive wasp control: Extinction is unlikely, with suppression dependent on dispersal and growth rates

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P. J. Lester, D. O'Sullivan and G. L. W. Perry,  Ecological Applications,  2023.
Abstract Gene drives offer a potentially revolutionary method for pest control over large spatial extents. These genetic modifications spread deleterious variants through a population and have been proposed as methods for pest suppression or even eradication. We examined the ...

Optimizing the delivery of self-disseminating vaccines in fluctuating wildlife populations

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C. Schreiner, A. Basinski, C. Remien and S. Nuismer,  PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases,  17:e0011018. 2023.
Author summary Pathogens such as Ebola, rabies, and Lassa virus that usually infect wildlife can jump to the human population. In the worst case, this can lead to outbreaks or pandemics such as happened in 2014 with Ebola and 2019 with SARS-CoV-2. One approach to mitigate the ...

Can Gene-Drives Combat Vector-Borne Diseases?

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Anonymous,  tomorrow.bio,  2023.
Scientists, technophiles, and the medical community are abuzz with a topic that sounds like science fiction: gene-drives. Given the growing fear of vector-borne diseases, wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could meddle with genetics to drive vectors like mosquitoes to extinction? ...

How genetically modifying mosquitoes could strengthen the world’s war on malaria

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S. Oliver and J. Raman,  The Conversation,  2023.
Mosquitoes can be genetically modified through two different technologies. The first method, paratransgenesis, involves infecting mosquitoes with bacteria that prevent them from transmitting malaria. This doesn’t harm the mosquito. It is important not to eliminate or harm ...

Single-cell profiling of Anopheles gambiae spermatogenesis defines the onset of meiotic silencing and premeiotic overexpression of the X chromosome

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N. Page, C. Taxiarchi, D. Tonge, J. Kuburic, E. Chesters, A. Kriezis, K. Kyrou, L. Game, T. Nolan and R. Galizi,  Commun Biol,  6:850. 2023.
Understanding development and genetic regulation in the Anopheles gambiae germline is essential to engineer effective genetic control strategies targeting this malaria mosquito vector. These include targeting the germline to induce sterility or using regulatory sequences to drive ...

Bioinformatic and literature assessment of toxicity and allergenicity of a CRISPR-Cas9 engineered gene drive to control Anopheles gambiae the mosquito vector of human malaria

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A. Qureshi and J. B. Connolly,  Malaria Journal,  22:234. 2023.
Population suppression gene drive is currently being evaluated, including via environmental risk assessment (ERA), for malaria vector control. One such gene drive involves the dsxFCRISPRh transgene encoding (i) hCas9 endonuclease, (ii) T1 guide RNA (gRNA) targeting the doublesex ...

Proposed Changes to the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant or Synthetic Nucleic Acid Molecules (NIH Guidelines)

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National Institutes of Health,  Federal Register,  2023.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) seeks input on a proposal to revise the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant or Synthetic Nucleic Acid Molecules (NIH Guidelines) to include specific considerations and requirements for conducting research involving gene drive ...

Baker: New tools can change mosquitoes’ DNA, but should it be done?

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K. Baker,  Fremont News Messenger,  2023.
Suppose Sauron — or perhaps Gandalf — were to offer you a magical golden ring with the power to rid the world of mosquitoes once and for all. And with their demise, to save countless human lives from the many diseases for which mosquitoes are the sole or primary vectors: ...

Mosquitoes spread malaria. These researchers want them to fight it instead

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G. Brumfiel,  NPR,  2023.
Mosquitoes carry malaria, which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year. Now some researchers are trying to use genetic engineering to make the pesky insects into allies in the fight against the disease. The approach is a radical departure from traditional ways of ...

Mosquito-friendly gene drive may lead to a malaria-free future

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Anonymous,  LIFE TECHNOLOGY,  2023.
A gene drive is a genetic mechanism that allows a particular gene to spread rapidly through a population. In the case of malaria, scientists are working on developing a gene drive that would make mosquitoes resistant to the parasite that causes the disease. This would reduce the ...

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

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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

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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 ...

Fighting the battle against evolution: designing genetically modified organisms for evolutionary stability

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M. Arbel-Groissman, I. Menuhin-Gruman, D. Naki, S. Bergman and T. Tuller,  Trends in Biotechnology,  2023.
Synthetic biology has made significant progress in many areas, but a major challenge that has received limited attention is the evolutionary stability of synthetic constructs made of heterologous genes. The expression of these constructs in microorganisms, that is, production of ...

Dual effector population modification gene-drive strains of the African malaria mosquitoes, Anopheles gambiae and Anopheles coluzzii

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R. Carballar-Lejarazú, Y. Dong, T. B. Pham, T. Tushar, R. M. Corder, A. Mondal, H. M. Sánchez C, H.-F. Lee, J. M. Marshall, G. Dimopoulos and A. A. James,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  120:e2221118120. 2023.
Proposed genetic approaches for reducing human malaria include population modification, which introduces genes into vector mosquitoes to reduce or prevent parasite transmission. We demonstrate the potential of Cas9/guide RNA (gRNA)?based gene-drive systems linked to dual ...

Mosquitoes made immune to malaria could help stamp out the disease

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C. Wilson,  NewScientist,  2023.
Mosquitoes have been gene edited so they are immune to the parasites that cause malaria. If released into the wild, the genetic modification should spread through a population of mosquitoes because it contains a sequence known as a “gene drive”, which means all the modified ...

Routes of Introduction of Anopheles gambiae Into Remote Islands in the Indian Ocean

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R. E. Ditter, M. Campos, M. W. Crepeau, J. Pinto, A. Toilibou, Y. Amina, Y. Lee, A. J. Cornel and G. C. Lanzaro,  2023.
The malaria vector Anopheles gambiae s.s., is a primary malaria vector throughout sub-Saharan Africa including the islands of the Comoros archipelago (Anjouan, Grande Comore, Mayotte and Mohéli). These islands are located at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel in eastern ...

Unleashing the swarm: Battling the global mosquito menace and defending public health

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J. Entine and S. Moxon,  Genetic Literacy Project,  2023.
There is one solution embraced by global health experts that should be pursued aggressively, if with some caution. Scientists in real-world trials have altered the genomes of entire animal populations, including mosquitoes, to thwart the vectoring of diseases and control pests ...

Guerrilla eugenics: gene drives in heritable human genome editing

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A. D. Cutter,  J Med Ethics,  2023.
CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing can and has altered human genomes, bringing bioethical debates about this capability to the forefront of philosophical and policy considerations. Here, I consider the underexplored implications of CRISPR-Cas9 gene drives for heritable human genome ...

Steering and controlling evolution — from bioengineering to fighting pathogens

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M. Lässig, V. Mustonen and A. Nourmohammad,  Nature Reviews Genetics,  2023.
Control interventions steer the evolution of molecules, viruses, microorganisms or other cells towards a desired outcome. Applications range from engineering biomolecules and synthetic organisms to drug, therapy and vaccine design against pathogens and cancer. In all these ...

Novel Conservation Strategies to Conserve Australian Marsupials

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S. Legge, M. Hayward and A. Weeks,  American and Australasian Marsupials,  2023.
The Australian marsupial fauna has been devastated in the past 250 years, mainly due to impacts from invasive mammalian predators (cats and foxes), although other threats such as invasive herbivores, habitat loss and fragmentation, changes to fire regimes, and now climate change ...

Off Target: Gene Drives and the Balance of Life

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Save Our Seeds,  2023.
This is a compilation of conversations with experts about gene drive technologies and the science/social questions it raises.

Scientists are Gene-Editing Flies to Fight Crop Damage

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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 ...

How genetically modified mosquitoes could eradicate malaria

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S. Jones,  Nature,  2023.
Malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites that are transmitted from person to person by Anopheles mosquitoes — often Anopheles gambiae, the primary vector in sub-Saharan Africa. Many approaches to malaria control focus on mosquitoes. Insecticide-treated mosquito nets and indoor ...

MGSurvE: A framework to optimize trap placement for genetic surveillance of mosquito population

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C. H. Sánchez, D. L. Smith and J. M. Marshall,  bioRxiv,  2023.
Genetic surveillance of mosquito populations is becoming increasingly relevant as genetics-based mosquito control strategies advance from laboratory to field testing. Especially applicable are mosquito gene drive projects, the potential scale of which leads monitoring to be a ...

CRISPR-based gene drives generate super-Mendelian inheritance in the disease vector Culex quinquefasciatus

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T. Harvey-Samuel, X. Feng, E. M. Okamoto, D.-K. Purusothaman, P. T. Leftwich, L. Alphey and V. M. Gantz,  bioRxiv,  2023.06.12.544656. 2023.
Culex mosquitoes pose a significant public health threat as vectors for a variety of diseases including West Nile virus and lymphatic filariasis, and transmit pathogens threatening livestock, companion animals, and endangered birds. Rampant insecticide resistance makes ...

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

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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

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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

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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 ...

The attitudes of young adults towards mammalian predator control and Predator Free 2050 in Aotearoa New Zealand

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L. Dickie and F. Medvecky,  Australasian Journal of Environmental Management,  2023.
Predator Free 2050 (PF2050) is an ambitious goal that aims to remove three types of invasive mammals from New Zealand by 2050. It will require a significant amount of funding, research, and support. Young adults will have an important role to play for this programme to be ...

Requirements for market entry of gene drive-modified mosquitoes for control of vector-borne diseases: analogies to other biologic and biotechnology products

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S. L. James, H. Quemada, M. Q. Benedict and B. Dass,  Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology,  11:1205865. 2023.
Gene drive-modified mosquitoes (GDMMs) are proposed as new tools for control and elimination of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases, and promising results have been observed from testing conducted in containment. Although still at an early stage of development, it is ...

Generation game: gene-edited mosquitos to fight malaria

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J. Opara,  Sci Dev Net,  2023.
Population-level changes in the genetic make-up of one of the world’s deadliest animals could provide a key in the fight against malaria, proponents of a radical new technology argue. So-called gene drive technology, where genetic changes are passed down through generations, ...

A framework for identifying fertility gene targets for mammalian pest control

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C. C. Anna, A. Alana, E. Rey, E. Kevin, K. Sebastian, D. Ludovic, C. Jackson, E. C. Samuel, W. M. Philipp and J. G. Neil,  bioRxiv,  2023.05.30.542751. 2023.
Fertility-targeted gene drives have been proposed as an ethical genetic approach for managing wild populations of vertebrate pests for public health and conservation benefit. This manuscript introduces a framework to identify and evaluate target gene suitability based on ...

CRISPR-based gene editing of non-homologous end joining factors biases DNA repair pathway choice toward single-strand annealing in Aedes aegypti

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K. Chae, J. M. Overcash, C. Dawson, C. Valentin, H. Tsujimoto, K. M. Myles and Z. N. Adelman,  Current Research in Biotechnology,  5:100133. 2023.
To maintain genome stability, eukaryotic cells orchestrate DNA repair pathways to process DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) that result from diverse developmental or environmental stimuli. Bias in the selection of DSB repair pathways, either non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) or ...

Adaptation in the face of internal conflict: the paradox of the organism revisited

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M. M. Patten, M. A. Schenkel and J. A. Ågren,  Biological Reviews,  2023.
The paradox of the organism refers to the observation that organisms appear to function as coherent purposeful entities, despite the potential for within-organismal components like selfish genetic elements and cancer cells to erode them from within. While it is commonly accepted ...

Leveraging eco-evolutionary models for gene drive risk assessment

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M. A. Combs, A. J. Golnar, J. M. Overcash, A. L. Lloyd, K. R. Hayes, D. A. O’Brochta and K. M. Pepin,  Trends in Genetics,  2023.
As development of gene drive systems accelerates and diversifies, predicting outcomes for target populations and the potential for human and environmental risks requires accounting for numerous eco-evolutionary processes.Gene drive dynamic models quantify the influence of ...

Rapid, scalable, combinatorial genome engineering by marker-less enrichment and recombination of genetically engineered loci in yeast

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M. Abdullah, B. M. Greco, J. M. Laurent, R. K. Garge, D. R. Boutz, M. Vandeloo, E. M. Marcotte and A. H. Kachroo,  Cell Rep Methods,  3:100464. 2023.
A major challenge to rationally building multi-gene processes in yeast arises due to the combinatorics of combining all of the individual edits into the same strain. Here, we present a precise and multi-site genome editing approach that combines all edits without selection ...

Editorial: Genetic control of insect pest species—achievements, challenges, and perspectives

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I. Häcker, D. Bartsch, A. Choo and F. Marec,  Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology,  11. 2023.
Genetic control is a type ofbiological control and a promising approach to regulate insect pest populations in a species-specific manner. It is based on targeting the reproductive capacity of the target pest species to reduce population size to non-critical levels. The best known ...

The boundary problem: Defining and delineating the community in field trials with gene drive organisms

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N. de Graeff, I. Pirson, R. van der Graaf, A. L. Bredenoord and K. R. Jongsma,  Bioethics,  2023.
Despite widespread and worldwide efforts to eradicate vector-borne diseases such as malaria, these diseases continue to have an enormous negative impact on public health. For this reason, scientists are working on novel control strategies, such as gene drive technologies (GDTs). ...

Mathematical modeling of the performance of wild and transgenic mosquitoes in malaria transmission

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A. P. Wyse, A. J. B. dos Santos, J. D. Azevedo, A. C. de Meneses and V. M. D. Santos,  Plos One,  18:23. 2023.
A mathematical model that simulates malaria transmission under the influence of transgenic mosquitoes refractory to malaria is presented in this paper. The zygosity of transgenic mosquitoes is taken into account and, consequently, the total population of mosquitoes is comprised ...

Anti-CRISPR Anopheles mosquitoes inhibit gene drive spread under challenging behavioural conditions in large cages

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A. Simoni, R. D'Amato, C. Taxiarchi, M. Galardini, A. Trusso, R. Minuz, S. Gilli, A. Somerville, D. Shittu, A. Khalil, R. Galizi and R. Muller,  Research Square,  2023.
CRISPR-based gene drives have the potential to spread within a population and are considered as promising vector control tools. A doublesex-targeting gene drive was shown effective to suppress laboratory populations in both small and large cages, and it is considered for field ...

Gene Drives as Interventions into Nature: the Coproduction of Ontology and Morality in the Gene Drive Debate

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K. Boersma, B. Bovenkerk and D. Ludwig,  NanoEthics,  17:4. 2023.
Gene drives are potentially ontologically and morally disruptive technologies. The potential to shape evolutionary processes and to eradicate (e.g. malaria-transmitting or invasive) populations raises ontological questions about evolution, nature, and wilderness. The ...

Defining transformation events for gene drive in species complexes

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J. B. Connolly,  IOBC-WPRS Bulletin,  163:8-20. 2023.
Engineered gene drives (EGDs) that allow the super-Mendelian inheritance of genetic traits could one day be used to reduce the vectorial capacity of Anopheles species that transmit human malaria in Africa. Many Anopheles species belong to complexes of closely related sibling ...

In The Face Of Nigerian Mosquito Nets, Westerners’ Gene Editing Offers Hope

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O. Onwumere,  The Nigerian Voice,  2023.
In Nigeria, the utilization of mosquito nets is prevalent, while in the Western world, optimism is associated with the implementation of gene editing technology. In this article, ODIMEGWU ONWUMERE reports that malaria could soon be eradicated in Nigeria. According to US ...

Modelling the effect of migration on the localisation and spread of a gene drive

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C. Benjamin James and F.-L. Alexandre Jules Hen,  bioRxiv,  2023.04.02.535303. 2023.
Gene drives have the potential to address pressing ecological issues. Through the super-Mendelian inheritance of a gene drive, a trait can be spread through a population even in spite of a fitness cost. This ability to spread is both its greatest quality and detractor. We may not ...

First transgenic mosquito made in Africa by Transmission Zero

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H. Dunning,  Imperial College London,  2023.
Transmission Zero, a global scientific programme led by scientists at Imperial College London and the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) of Tanzania, in partnership with the Tanzanian National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), announces the generation of the first transgenic ...

A gene drive is a gene drive: the debate over lumping or splitting definitions

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S. L. James, D. A. O'Brochta, F. Randazzo and O. Akbari,  Nature Communications,  2023.
Gene drive technologies are being considered as a new approach to address a variety of currently intractable global problems, including to prevent disease transmission, reduce crop loss, and preserve biodiversity1. There are some outside the genetics research community who argue ...

Evolution driven by genetic engineering should be known as ‘genetic welding’ to draw scientific and ethical scrutiny

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S. Moore,  AZO Life Sciences,  2023.
The advent of CRISPR-Cas9 technology has been revolutionary, but it has also been highly controversial. In an opinion paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics, evolutionary geneticist Asher Cutter highlights the importance of coining the term ‘genetic welding’ for ...

The Promise and Challenge of Genetic Biocontrol Approaches for Malaria Elimination

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S. James and M. Santos,  Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease,  2023.
Malaria remains an ongoing public health challenge, with over 600,000 deaths in 2021, of which approximately 96% occurred in Africa. Despite concerted efforts, the goal of global malaria elimination has stalled in recent years. This has resulted in widespread calls for new ...

What should we call evolution driven by genetic engineering? Genetic welding, says researcher

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Cell Press,  Phys Org,  2023.
With CRISPR-Cas9 technology, humans can now rapidly change the evolutionary course of animals or plants by inserting genes that can easily spread through entire populations. Evolutionary geneticist Asher Cutter proposes that we call this evolutionary meddling “genetic ...

Synthetic gene drives as an anthropogenic evolutionary force

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A. D. Cutter,  Trends in Genetics,  2023.
Genetic drive represents a fundamental evolutionary force that can exact profound change to the genetic composition of populations by biasing allele transmission. Herein I propose that the use of synthetic homing gene drives, the human-mediated analog of endogenous genetic ...

Gene Drives Are Coming

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D. Lowe,  Science,  2023.
Consider the “gene drive” idea - there are a lot of variations, but the general idea is that you introduce a genetic sequence into an organism that can bias (drive) its own inheritance into the next generation. This is a thumb-on-the-scale unnatural selection if ever there ...

Identification and functional analysis of Cochliomyia hominivorax U6 gene promoters

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R. Novas, T. Basika, M. E. Williamson, P. Fresia, A. Menchaca and M. J. Scott,  Insect Molecular Biology,  2023.
The New World screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax, is an obligate parasite, which is a major pest of livestock. While the sterile insect technique was used very successfully to eradicate C. hominivorax from North and Central America, more cost-effective genetic methods will likely ...

Gene Drives: Target Malaria is underestimating the risks

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C. Then,  Testbiotech,  2023.
The Target Malaria consortium has for several years been planning to conduct field trials using genetically engineered mosquitoes in Burkina Faso. The aim is to transfer artificial gene constructs, i. e. the so-called ‘X-shredder’, into wild populations of the mosquitoes. ...

Regulatory and policy considerations for the implementation of gene drive-modified mosquitoes to prevent malaria transmission

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S. L. James, B. Dass and H. Quemada,  Transgenic Research,  32:17. 2023.
Gene drive-modified mosquitoes (GDMMs) are being developed as possible new tools to prevent transmission of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. To date no GDMMs have yet undergone field testing. This early stage is an opportune time for developers, supporters, and possible ...

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

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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 ...

CRISPR-based genetic control strategies for insect pests

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Y. Yan, R. A. Aumann, I. Hacker and M. F. Schetelig,  Journal of Integrative Agriculture,  22:651-668. 2023.
Genetic control strategies such as the sterile insect technique have successfully fought insect pests worldwide. The CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technology, together with high-quality genomic resources obtained in more and more species, ...

Gene Drives and Vector-Borne Diseases: A Comparative Perspective Using Malaria as a Case Study

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S. Todi,  The Takshashila Institution,  2023.
Gene drives are an emerging technological application to reduce the prevalence of vector-borne diseases, crop pests, and non-native invasive species. This method for vector control is currently at the research stage, with parallel community engagement programmes being carried out ...

Hybrid incompatibilities in the anopheles gambiae species complex

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A. Kriezis,  Imperial College London,  2023.
Malaria is an infectious disease caused by parasites of the genus Plasmodium which is responsible for approximately 400,000 deaths annually, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes belonging to the Anopheles gambiae species complex. While progress ...

Alleviating the burden of malaria with gene drive technologies? A biocentric analysis of the moral permissibility of modifying malaria mosquitoes

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N. de Graeff, K. R. Jongsma and A. L. Bredenoord,  Journal of Medical Ethics,  2023.
Gene drive technologies (GDTs) have been proposed as a potential new way to alleviate the burden of malaria, yet have also raised ethical questions. A central ethical question regarding GDTs relates to whether it is morally permissible to intentionally modify or eradicate ...

Engagement on risk assessment for gene drive mosquitoes by EFSA and Target Malaria

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S. Hartley, A. Kokotovich, Y. Devos and J. Mumford,  Environmental Science and Policy,  142:183-193. 2023.
As engineered gene drive technologies continue to advance, many actors are actively considering how environmental risk assessments (RAs) for gene drive organisms should be conducted, and how stakeholder engagement opportunities should be provided. There is, however, a lack of ...

A toxin-antidote CRISPR gene drive system for regional population modification

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J. Champer, E. Lee, E. Yang, C. Liu, A. G. Clark and P. W. Messer,  Nature Communications,  11:1082. 2023.
Engineered gene drives based on a homing mechanism could rapidly spread genetic alterations through a population. However, such drives face a major obstacle in the form of resistance against the drive. In addition, they are expected to be highly invasive. Here, we introduce the ...

Simulations Reveal High Efficiency and Confinement of a Population Suppression CRISPR Toxin-Antidote Gene Drive

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Y. Zhu and J. Champer,  ACS Synthetic Biolog,  2023.
Though engineered gene drives hold great promise for spreading through and suppressing populations of disease vectors or invasive species, complications such as resistance alleles and spatial population structure can prevent their success. Additionally, most forms of suppression ...

GeneConvene Global Collaborative Webinar Series | Emerging Gene Drive Systems 2023

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David O'Brochta,  2023.
Gene drive systems are being engineered in the laboratory and in some cases shown to be effective at rapidly altering target-gene frequencies in experimental populations. Much of this foundational work has been conducted in insects in the laboratory. This webinar series will ...

Gene Drive Technology With Agricultural Application Potential

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R. Carmeli-Peslak,  SeedWorld,  2023.
Gene drive technology, a genetic phenomenon that occurs in nature, causes a trait to spread in species through sexual reproduction over many generations. The inheritance rate is higher than the Mendelian rate which is 50%. Gene drives have been used for public health and ...

Will new genetic engineering tech finally eliminate malaria?

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Anonymous,  Business Daily,  2023.
Richard Mukabana, a senior research and policy analyst at African Institute for Development Policy, says the technology which employs the principle of sending a thief to catch a thief may yet prove the most effective. “It is only a mosquito that knows where another mosquito is ...

Next-generation CRISPR gene-drive systems using Cas12a nuclease

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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 ...

How genomics can help biodiversity conservation

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K. Theissinger, C. Fernandes, G. Formenti, I. Bista, P. R. Berg, C. Bleidorn, A. Bombarely, A. Crottini, G. R. Gallo, J. A. Godoy, S. Jentoft, J. Malukiewicz, A. Mouton, R. A. Oomen, S. Paez, P. J. Palsbøll, C. Pampoulie, M. J. Ruiz-López, S. Secomandi, H,  Trends in Genetics,  2023.
Genomics provides effective tools to characterize biodiversity, but the full implementation of genomic techniques in practical conservation is still limited. We review some of the main approaches in biodiversity genomics available to conservationists and genomicists.High-quality, ...

Gene Drive: Past, Present and Future Roads to Vertebrate Biocontrol

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G. R. McFarlane, C. B. A. Whitelaw and S. G. Lillico,  Applied Biosciences,  2:52-70. 2023.
Scientists have long sought a technology to humanely control populations of damaging invasive pests in a species-specific manner. Gene drive technology could see this become a reality. This review charts the twists and turns on the road to developing gene drives in vertebrates. ...

Review of gene drive modelling and implications for risk assessment of gene drive organisms

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J. L. Frieß, C. R. Lalyer, B. Giese, S. Simon and M. Otto,  Ecological Modelling,  478:110285. 2023.
Synthetic gene drive (GD) systems constitute a form of novel invasive environmental biotechnology with far-reaching consequences beyond those of other known genetically modified organisms (GMOs). During the last 10 years, the development of GD systems has been closely linked to ...

The Anthropocene as the End of Nature? Why Recognizing Interventionism Is Key in Coming to Terms with the Anthropocene

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K. Boersma,  ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS,  44:195-219. 2023.
In this article, I address and argue against the tendency to understand the anthropocene as inaugurating the end of nature. I conduct two key moves. First, by way of an engagement with the concept of anthropocene technology I explain how understanding the anthropocene as the end ...

Introducing Emerging Health Technologies in Africa

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Health Tech Africa,  Health Tech Africa Podcast,  2023.
In this episode, the Project Director of the Platform for Dialogue and Action on Health Technologies in Africa, Professor Richard Mukabana, discusses new technologies that if well developed and proven safe and effective, have enormous potential to eradicate disease on the ...

Social justice environmental activists move to block gene editing to control invasive species and promote biodiversity. Here’s why they’re misguided

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S. Smyth,  Genetic Literacy Project,  2023.
Control of invasive species has been extremely difficult with eradication virtually impossible. To control invasive plant species, chemicals are commonly used while in some instances removal of plants by hand, as Shiva advocates, is undertaken. Efforts to control invasive animals ...

Biopolitik: The Promise of Gene Drive

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S. Todi,  Technopolitik,  2023.
Gene drives are genetic elements of an organism that are transmitted to progeny at higher than mendelian frequencies (>50%). Gene editing techniques such as CRISPR–Cas9 have made gene drives extremely efficient in laboratory settings and have shown the potential to reduce the ...

Moving beyond narrow definitions of gene drive: Diverse perspectives and frames enable substantive dialogue among science and humanities teachers in the United States and United Kingdom

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S. Hartley, A. Stelmach, J. A. Delborne and S. K. Barnhill-Dilling,  Public Understanding of Science,  2023.
Gene drive is an emerging biotechnology with applications in global health, conservation and agriculture. Scientists are preparing for field trials, triggering debate about when and how to release gene-drive organisms. These decisions depend on public understandings of gene ...

How CRISPR could help save crops from devastation caused by pests

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E. F. Merchant,  MIT Technology Review,  2023.
Researchers are now looking to add cutting-edge technology to California’s anti-Pierce’s arsenal, by changing the genome of the glassy-winged sharpshooter so that it can no longer spread the bacterium. Such a solution is possible thanks to CRISPR gene-editing technology, ...

Horizontal gene transfer from plant to whitefly

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T. Islam, R. B. Azad, S. H. Kasfy, A. A. Rahman and T. Z. Khan,  Trends in Biotechnology,  2023.
The recent discovery of the horizontal transfer of a toxin-neutralizing gene from plant to whitefly (Bemisia tabaci), a polyphagous insect, sparked a new area of study. In this forum, we discuss some potential biotechnological applications of this newly discovered knowledge in ...

Imperial startup Biocentis to develop genetic tech to control harmful insects

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D. Silverman,  Imperial College London,  2023.
The Imperial startup was founded in 2022 by Imperial researchers in partnership with technology-focused investment group Neurone to create a more effective and sustainable alternative to pesticides. While insects play an essential role in the global ecosystem, among the ...

Ethical dilemma: Should we get rid of mosquitoes?

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Talya Hackett,  TED-Ed,  2023.
Mosquitoes are responsible for more human deaths every year than any other animal, but very few of the 3,500 mosquito species actually transmit deadly diseases to humans. Scientists have been conducting experiments using engineered technologies called gene drives that could ...

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

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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 ...

Closing the gap to effective gene drive in Aedes aegypti by exploiting germline regulatory elements

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M. A. E. Anderson, E. Gonzalez, J. X. D. Ang, L. Shackleford, K. Nevard, S. A. N. Verkuijl, M. P. Edgington, T. Harvey-Samuel and L. Alphey,  Nature Communications,  14:338. 2023.
CRISPR/Cas9-based homing gene drives have emerged as a potential new approach to mosquito control. While attempts have been made to develop such systems in Aedes aegypti, none have been able to match the high drive efficiency observed in Anopheles species. Here we generate Ae. ...

Gene Drives Could Fight Malaria and Other Global Killers but Might Have Unintended Consequences

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M. Cobb,  Scientific American,  2023.
Every year more than 600,000 people die from mosquito-transmitted malaria, most of them children under age five. Some insects that are disease vectors, such as mosquitoes, are currently expanding their range around the world, bringing new threats. Genetic engineering can fix this ...

Researchers Create New System for Safer Gene-Drive Testing and Development

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M. Aguilera,  UC San Diego Today,  2023.
In the journal Nature Communications, University of California San Diego researchers led by former Postdoctoral Scholar Gerard Terradas together with Postdoctoral Scholar Zhiqian Li and Professor Ethan Bier, in close collaboration with UC Berkeley graduate student Jared Bennett ...

Environmental, Socio-economic, and Health Impact Assessment (ESHIA) for Gene Drive Organisms

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isaaa Inc. and Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research,  ISAAA,  2023.
Understanding the possible positive and negative impacts that gene drive organisms could have on the environment and people is essential before these technologies are considered for release, whether for research purposes or for use. Different impacts are assessed through ...

Trust in science and scientists: Effects of social attitudes and motivations on views regarding climate change, vaccines and gene drive technology

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H. G. W. Dixson, A. F. Komugabe-Dixson, F. Medvecky, J. Balanovic, H. Thygesen and E. A. MacDonald,  Journal of Trust Research,  2023.
Trust in science and scientists (TSS) is an increasingly important topic with respect to how science is applied within society. However, its role regarding specific issues may vary depending upon other psychosocial factors. In this study, we investigated how trust interacts with ...

Assessment of distant-site rescue elements for CRISPR toxin-antidote gene drives

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J. Chen, X. Xu and J. Champer,  bioRxiv,  2023.01.06.522951. 2023.
New types of gene drives promise to provide increased flexibility, offering many options for confined modification or suppression of target populations. Among the most promising are CRISPR toxin-antidote gene drives, which disrupt essential wild-type genes by targeting them with ...

The Possibilities of Gene Drives for Managing Populations and Controlling Diseases

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J. Vijay Upadhye, U. N. Shah and B. Mudhol,  Salud, Ciencia y Tecnologia,  3. 2023.
The technical limitations and the use of gene drives to address ecological problems by modifying all populations of wild species remain primarily speculative. Here, we examine the possibility that RNA-guided gene drives based on the CRISPR nuclease Cas9 could be used as an ...

CRISPR Gene Drives: A Weapon of Mass Destruction?

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J. Ng,  Medium,  2022.
Gene drives allow scientists to “drive” new genes — and their associated traits — into wildlife populations at unprecedented rates. Here’s a simplified explanation of how gene drives work. In normal sexual reproduction between species with two copies of chromosomes, ...

Gene drive designs for efficient and localisable population suppression using Y-linked editors

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R. Geci, K. Willis and A. Burt,  PLOS Genetics,  18:e1010550. 2022.
Author summary Some pest populations can be successfully controlled by the inundative release of sterile males, but this approach is not practicable when the target population is large or the species difficult to rear. Computer modelling has previously demonstrated that releasing ...

Use of Insect Promoters in Genetic Engineering to Control Mosquito-Borne Diseases

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V. Bottino-Rojas and A. A. James,  Biomolecules,  13. 2022.
Mosquito transgenesis and gene-drive technologies provide the basis for developing promising new tools for vector-borne disease prevention by either suppressing wild mosquito populations or reducing their capacity from transmitting pathogens. Many studies of the regulatory DNA ...

Genes drive organisms and slippery slopes

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D. B. Resnik, R. F. Medina, F. Gould, G. Church and J. Kuzma,  Pathog Glob Health,  2022.
The bioethical debate about using gene drives to alter or eradicate wild populations has focused mostly on issues concerning short-term risk assessment and management, governance and oversight, and public and community engagement, but has not examined big-picture- 'where is this ...

Genetically modified mosquitoes … could CRISPR gene editing end malaria?

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D. Wells,  SelectScience,  2022.
Despite being a preventable and treatable disease, malaria is currently affecting the lives of more than 200 million people.1 This results in over half a million deaths per year, with 80% of this mortality occurring in children under the age of 5.2 In addition to the tragic ...

Gene drive-mediated population elimination for biodiversity conservation. When you come to a fork in the road, take it

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B. A. Hay and M. Guo,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  119:e2218020119. 2022.
How can the ability of t w2 to spread at super-Mendelian frequencies be utilized even if it is unable to directly drive the population to an unfit state? Gierus, Birand, and colleagues proposed placing Cas9 and a gRNA at a neutral position within the t haplotype. In this hybrid ...

Gene editing and agrifood systems

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FAO,  FAO,  2022.
Gene-editing technologies represent a promising new tool for plant and animal breeding in low- and middle-income countries. They enhance precision and efficiency over current breeding methods and could lead to rapid development of improved plant varieties and animal breeds. ...

Exploring the value of a global gene drive project registry

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R. I. Taitingfong, C. Triplett, V. N. Vásquez, R. M. Rajagopalan, R. Raban, A. Roberts, G. Terradas, B. Baumgartner, C. Emerson, F. Gould, F. Okumu, C. E. Schairer, H. C. Bossin, L. Buchman, K. J. Campbell, A. Clark, J. Delborne, K. Esvelt, J. Fisher, R.,  Nature Biotechnology,  2022.
Recent calls to establish a global project registry before releasing any gene-drive-modified organisms (GDOs) have suggested a registry could be valuable to coordinate research, collect data to monitor and evaluate potential ecological impacts, and facilitate transparent ...

Performance characteristics allow for confinement of a CRISPR toxin-antidote gene drive designed for population suppression

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S. Zhang and J. Champer,  bioRxiv,  2022.12.13.520356. 2022.
Gene drives alleles that can bias their own inheritance are a promising way to engineer populations for control of disease vectors, invasive species, and agricultural pests. Recent advancements in the field have yielded successful examples of powerful suppression type drives and ...

New CRISPR tech makes it possible to wipe out invasive mice

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2022.

Experts urge caution over biotech that can wipe out insect pests

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L. Fauvel,  Phys Org,  2022.
Dozens of scientists, experts and campaigners called for a ban on the release of genetically-edited organisms into the wild, in a statement Friday warning of potentially severe risks to the world's pollinators. The appeal was launched at crunch biodiversity talks in Montreal, ...

Bioinformatic and literature assessment of toxicity and allergenicity of a CRISPR-Cas9 engineered gene drive to control the human malaria mosquito vector Anopheles gambiae

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A. Qureshi and J. B. Connolly,  Malaria Journal,  2022.
Population suppression gene drive is currently being evaluated, including via environmental risk assessment (ERA), for malaria vector control. One such gene drive involves the dsxFCRISPRh transgene encoding (i) hCas9 endonuclease, (i) T1 guide RNA (gRNA) targeting the doublesex ...

A natural gene drive could steer invasive rodents on islands to extinction

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B. Brookshire,  ScienceNews,  2022.
In the battle against the invasive house mouse on islands, scientists are using the rodent’s own genes against it. With the right tweaks, introducing a few hundred genetically altered mice could drive an island’s invasive mouse population to extinction in about 25 years, ...

East African policy dialogue on research of genetically modified mosquitoes for malaria control and elimination

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C. Mugoya,  Target Malaria,  2022.
The East African Community Secretariat, in collaboration with the East African Health Research Commission; NEPAD, AFIDEP and IFAKARA Health Institute recently convened an East African regional dialogue in Dar es salaam, Tanzania from 17-19 November 2022 to deliberate the way ...

Determining the landscape of resistance to gene drives in the malaria mosquito

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I. Morianou,  Imperial College London,  2022.
Gene drives are engineered selfish genetic elements with the potential to spread throughout entire insect populations for sustainable vector control. Recently, a gene drive was shown to eliminate caged populations of the malaria mosquito by targeting the highly conserved ...

No Environmental Release of Gene Drive Organisms

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Anonymous,  STOP GENE DRIVES,  2022.
We urge governments to prevent the environmental release of gene drive organisms and to establish a global moratorium on the release of gene drive organisms at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Gene drives work against natural rules of inheritance forcing nearly ...

Scientist Recommends Gene Drive Strategies Of Pest Control To Increase Food Security

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L. Agbo,  allnews,  2022.
A Nigerian scientist, Dr. Rose Gidado has recommended that Nigerian policymakers and farmers adopt the technology of a gene drive-based pest management technique in order to increase bumper harvest and food security.In an interview with NAN on Monday in Abuja, Gidado, the Deputy ...

That new chestnut? USDA plans to allow the release of GE trees into wild forests

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D. E. Davis,  The Hill,  2022.
In the 21st century, there are those who believe the trees can be resuscitated via genetic engineering (GE). In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has just released a draft environmental impact statement and draft plant pest risk assessment that will allow the ...

Discovery of 119-Million-Year-Old “Selfish” Genes Casts Doubt on Established Evolution Beliefs

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Stowers Institute for Medical Research,  SciTechDaily,  2022.
Meiotic drivers, a kind of selfish gene, are indeed selfish. They are found in virtually all species’ genomes, including humans, and unjustly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, resulting in infertility and impaired organism health. Their ...

Discovery of 119-Million year old Selfish Genes Casts Doubt on Established Evolution Beliefs

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Stowers Institute for Medical Research,  2022.
Meiotic drivers, a kind of selfish gene, are indeed selfish. They are found in virtually all species’ genomes, including humans, and unjustly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, resulting in infertility and impaired organism health. Their ...

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

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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 ...

A CRISPR endonuclease gene drive reveals distinct mechanisms of inheritance bias

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S. A. N. Verkuijl, E. Gonzalez, M. Li, J. X. D. Ang, N. P. Kandul, M. A. E. Anderson, O. S. Akbari, M. B. Bonsall and L. Alphey,  Nature Communications,  13:7145. 2022.
CRISPR/Cas gene drives can bias transgene inheritance through different mechanisms. Homing drives are designed to replace a wild-type allele with a copy of a drive element on the homologous chromosome. In Aedes aegypti, the sex-determining locus is closely linked to the white ...

Should we use a genetic weapon against mosquitoes carrying malaria?

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T. H. Saey,  ScienceNewsExplores,  2022.
In a large laboratory cage, a male mosquito carries a genetic weapon that could launch the destruction of his species. That loss could also mean the end of the parasite that causes malaria. The weapon? A self-replicating bit of DNA known as a gene drive. It’s one of the most ...

The effect of mating complexity on gene drive dynamics

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P. Verma, R. G. Reeves, S. Simon, M. Otto and C. S. Gokhale,  The American Naturalist,  2022.
Gene drive technology promises to deliver on some of the global challenges humanity faces today in health care, agriculture, and conservation. However, there is a limited understanding of the consequences of releasing self-perpetuating transgenic organisms into wild populations ...

CRISPR-Mediated Cassette Exchange (CriMCE): A Method to Introduce and Isolate Precise Marker-Less Edits

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I. Morianou, A. Crisanti, T. Nolan and A. M. Hammond,  The CRISPR Journal,  2022.
The introduction of small unmarked edits to the genome of insects is essential to study the molecular underpinnings of important biological traits, such as resistance to insecticides and genetic control strategies. Advances in CRISPR genome engineering have made this possible, ...

Gene drive could be used to wipe out invasive mice on islands

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M. Le Page,  NewScientist,  2022.
For the first time, researchers have created a gene drive – a kind of genetic parasite – that could be used to eradicate mammalian pests such as mice by making them infertile. The technology could provide a humane alternative to the poison baits currently used to tackle ...

World first trial to eradicate mice through gene modification

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I. Mannix,  COSMOS,  2022.
Mouse populations could be eradicated in some areas through new gene modification technology to render female mice infertile. The technology – called t-CRISPR – was previously developed to target malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. This is the first proof of concept for its use ...

SHOULD WE CREATE GENE DRIVE GREY SQUIRRELS

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S. Hartley and T. Law,  GeneDriveGovernance.org,  2022.
UK scientists have proposed gene drive as a management tool to control grey squirrels. Now is a good time to talk about this emerging technology because the hopes and concerns of experts, stakeholders and the public can help to determine if or how it might be developed. To help ...

Gene drive technology to suppress invasive mice

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University of Adelaide,  Phys Org,  2022.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have released their first findings on the potential effectiveness of revolutionary gene drive technology to control invasive mice. The team has developed a world-first proof of concept for the technology—called t-CRISPR—using ...

Leveraging a natural murine meiotic drive to suppress invasive populations

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L. Gierus, A. Birand, M. D. Bunting, G. I. Godahewa, S. G. Piltz, K. P. Oh, A. J. Piaggio, D. W. Threadgill, J. Godwin, O. Edwards, P. Cassey, J. V. Ross, T. A. A. Prowse and P. Q. Thomas,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  119:e2213308119. 2022.
Invasive rodents are a major cause of environmental damage and biodiversity loss, particularly on islands. Unlike insects, genetic biocontrol strategies including population-suppressing gene drives with biased inheritance have not been developed in mice. Here, we demonstrate a ...

WORLDWIDE: EXPERTS ON GENE DRIVES

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Stop Gene Drive,  STOP GENE DRIVES,  2022.
We are travelling the world speaking to some of the world’s leading thinkers, activists and academics on the impact of gene drives. We interviewed more than 20 experts from around the world

Gene drive technologies: navigating the ethical landscape

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N. d. Graeff,  Utrecht University,  2022.
Gene drives are technologies that modify a particular genetic element in animals or insects so that this genetic element does not follow the typical rules of heredity, and is passed onto future generations with an increased likelihood. Gene drive technologies could be used to ...

Making waves: Comparative analysis of gene drive spread characteristics in a continuous space model

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M. Pan and J. Champer,  bioRxiv,  2022.11.01.514650. 2022.
With their ability to rapidly increase in frequency, gene drives can be used to modify or suppress target populations after an initial release of drive-containing individuals. Recent advances in this field have revealed many possibilities for different types of drives, and ...

Modeling the efficacy of CRISPR gene drive for snail immunity on schistosomiasis control

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R. E. Grewelle, J. Perez-Saez, J. Tycko, E. K. O. Namigai, C. G. Rickards and G. A. De Leo,  PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases,  16:e0010894. 2022.
CRISPR gene drives could revolutionize the control of infectious diseases by accelerating the spread of engineered traits that limit parasite transmission in wild populations. Gene drive technology in mollusks has received little attention despite the role of freshwater snails as ...

Pulled, pushed or failed: the demographic impact of a gene drive can change the nature of its spatial spread

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L. Kläy, L. Girardin, V. Calvez and F. Débarre,  arXiv,  2022.
Understanding the temporal spread of gene drive alleles -- alleles that bias their own transmission -- through modeling is essential before any field experiments. In this paper, we present a deterministic reaction-diffusion model describing the interplay between demographic and ...

What are gene drivers and why do 300,000 people want them banned?

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Anika,  Social Bites,  2022.
Ecologists in Action and Madrid Agroecologico submitted 300,000 citizen signatures to the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, asking Minister Teresa Ribera to give Spain a boost. International moratorium on technology for the release of organisms modified ...

Target Malaria’s scientists are working to rid Africa of an ancient plague

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D. Matthews,  Vox,  2022.
This could very well be the last century in human history when people die from malaria. If and when we do eradicate the disease, the team at Target Malaria will probably deserve a big share of the credit. Their plan to use gene drive technology to wipe out species of mosquitoes ...

Hurdles in responsive community engagement for the development of environmental biotechnologies

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A. M. Normandin, L. M. Fitzgerald, J. Yip and S. W. Evans,  Synthetic Biology,  7:ysac022. 2022.
Recent calls for engaging communities in biotechnology development do not draw enough attention to the hurdles that must be overcome for engagement strategies to effectively feed back into research design and conduct. These hurdles call into question many standard ways of ...

Driving down malaria transmission with engineered gene drives

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W. T. Garrood, P. Cuber, K. Willis, F. Bernardini, N. M. Page and R. E. Haghighat-Khah,  Frontiers in Genetics,  13. 2022.
The last century has witnessed the introduction, establishment and expansion of mosquito-borne diseases into diverse new geographic ranges. Malaria is transmitted by female Anopheles mosquitoes. Despite making great strides over the past few decades in reducing the burden of ...

Why we need to talk about ‘gene-drive’ grey squirrels

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Anonymous,  University of Exeter,  2022.
Would the best way of controlling the UK’s rampant grey squirrel population be to spread genetic changes throughout the species? A new research film, to be shown next month at Exeter Phoenix, sees scientists, conservation and wildlife experts debate the use of emergent ...

Mosquito Gene Drives and the Malaria Eradication Agenda

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Editor: R. Carballar-Lejarazu,,  Jenny Stanford Publishing,  2022.
Malaria is one of most serious infectious diseases today and has afflicted humankind for thousands of years. A significant number of people still die from this mosquito-borne disease, despite the use of various malaria prevention and control methods over hundreds of years and ...

Assessing single-locus CRISPR/Cas9-based gene drive variants in the mosquito Aedes aegypti via single generation crosses and modeling

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W. Reid, A. E. Williams, I. Sanchez-Vargas, J. Lin, R. Juncu, K. E. Olson and A. W. E. Franz,  G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics,  2022.
Critical to the design of a single-locus autonomous GD is that the selected genomic locus is amenable to both GD and appropriate expression of the antiviral effector. In our study, we used reverse engineering to target two intergenic genomic loci, which had previously shown to be ...

Introgression of a synthetic sex ratio distortion transgene into different genetic backgrounds of Anopheles coluzzii

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P. Pollegioni, T. Persampieri, R. L. Minuz, A. Bucci, A. Trusso, S. Di Martino, C. Leo, M. Bruttini, M. Ciolfi, A. M. Waldvogel, F. Tripet, A. Simoni, A. Crisanti and R. Müller,  Insect Molecular Biology,  2022.
The development of genetically modified mosquitoes (GMM) and their subsequent field release offers innovative approaches for vector control of malaria. A non-gene drive self-limiting male-bias Ag(PMB)1 strain has been developed in a 47-year-old laboratory G3 strain of Anopheles ...

Anopheles homing suppression drive candidates exhibit unexpected performance differences in simulations with spatial structure

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S. E. Champer, I. K. Kim, A. G. Clark, P. W. Messer and J. Champer,  eLife,  11:e79121. 2022.
Recent experiments have produced several Anopheles gambiae homing gene drives that disrupt female fertility genes, thereby eventually inducing population collapse. Such drives may be highly effective tools to combat malaria. One such homing drive, based on the zpg promoter ...

GeneConvene Global Collaborative | Laboratory Containment of Arthropods Capable of Gene Drive: Best Practices and Recommendations

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Hector Quemada,  GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2022.
This webinar is presented by members of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's American Committee of Medical Entomologists who were involved in drafting a recent Addendum to the ASTMH's Arthropod Containment Guidelines that specifically consider arthropods with ...

Combating Mosquito-Borne Diseases with CRISPR

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N. Spahich,  The Scientist,  2022.
Female mosquitoes are some of the deadliest organisms in the world due to their ability to spread infectious diseases through a simple bite. Mosquito-borne diseases such as yellow fever, Zika, Dengue fever, and malaria kill millions of humans every year, and there are limited ...

Improvement of Resistance in Plants Against Insect-Pests Using Genome Editing Tools

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S. Bhat and S. Kumar,  Genome Editing: Current Technology Advances and Applications for Crop Improvement,  2022.
During growth period plants are subjected to both biotic and abiotic stresses. Like other biotic stresses, insect-pests are the most serious challenge for the plants particularly in yield losses. Genome editing techniques are becoming an emerging technology bringing real ...

Research: Scientists Modify Mosquitoes That Can’t Spread Malaria

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N. Kharbanda,  Onlymyhealth,  2022.
According to a research, scientists have found a way to genetically engineer mosquitoes with the capability to slow down the multiplication of malaria-causing parasites in their gut. This is an advance study, that can help in preventing the infecting of the disease in humans. The ...

Explained: How Scientists Are Genetically modifying Mosquitoes To Reduce Malaria

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Anonymous,  Outlook,  2022.
he Delhi High Court on Friday asked the state government to inform it within two weeks of the proposal of increasing the fine amount in mosquito breeding cases. The court last year took suo moto cognizance of the issue of large-scale mosquito breeding in the city, resulting in ...

Explained: How scientists engineered mosquitoes that cannot spread malaria

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FP Explainers,  Firstpost,  2022.
The world of science is reaching new heights. Scientists have now developed mosquitoes that will bite you but not cause malaria. The study was conducted by a team of researchers called Transmission: Zero at the Imperial College of London. The results of the research were ...

Points to consider in seeking biosafety approval for research, testing, and environmental release of experimental genetically modified biocontrol products during research and development

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W. K. Tonui, V. Ahuja, C. J. Beech, J. B. Connolly, B. Dass, D. C. M. Glandorf, et al.,  Transgenic Research,  31:607. 2022.
Novel genetically modified biological control products (referred to as “GM biocontrol products”) are being considered to address a range of complex problems in public health, conservation, and agriculture, including preventing the transmission of vector-borne parasitic and ...

Malaria Gene Drives: A Battle Of Wit Between The Government And Stakeholders

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O. Onwumere,  The Nigerian Voice,  2022.
Through the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), guidelines for gene editing, primarily in agriculture, were approved by the Nigerian Federal Government in December 2020. As the first country in Africa, the government was praised for taking the momentous step of ...

Malaria-free mosquito engineered by scientists

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GNA,  MODERN GHANA,  2022.
Scientists have genetically modified the main malaria-carrying species of mosquito in sub-SaharanAfrica to slow the growth of malaria-causing parasites in their gut, preventing transmission of thedisease to humans. When the Anopheles gambiae takes a blood meal, it produces two ...

Gene drive used to make all female mosquitoes sterile

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Akfire1,  TechiLink,  2022.
We have long known that we can limit malaria infections by controlling the mosquitoes that transmit them. But that knowledge has not translated into auditing efforts that have always been completely successful. Many of the approaches we have used to control mosquitoes have caused ...

Justifying an Intentional Species Extinction: The Case of Anopheles gambiae

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D. E. Callies and Y. Rohwer,  Environmental Values,  31:193-210. 2022.
Each year, over 200 million people are infected with the malaria parasite, nearly half a million of whom succumb to the disease. Emerging genetic technologies could, in theory, eliminate the burden of malaria throughout the world by intentionally eradicating the mosquitoes that ...

How We’re Reducing Disease With Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

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V. Wise,  HealthMatch,  2022.
We all know mosquitoes as those annoying insects we swat away from our faces. They carry diseases, so we don’t want them anywhere near us. There are over 200 types of wild mosquitoes bugging us across America and the U.S. territories. Approximately 12 types can spread disease, ...

Scientists stunt parasite growth to tackle malaria

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RSS24.news,  RSS24.NEWS,  2022.
Loss of life, loss of livlihoods and homelessness have already afflicted these flood marooned refugees in Pakistan. Now these living conditions means they also face sickness and and without protection malaria is a major threat. Health agencies try to protect people against ...

Scientists are manipulating the DNA of mosquitoes to fight the spread of malaria

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R. Min,  EURONEWS.NEXT,  2022.
Scientists say they have managed to genetically modify mosquitoes so that they are unable to spread malaria, a disease that kills well over half a million people each year. The changes cause mosquitoes to live shorter lives, while the parasites inside them, which cause the fatal ...

Scientists engineer mosquitoes that cannot spread malaria

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J. Dalton,  Independen,  2022.
Scientists have engineered mosquitoes that cannot give humans malaria, saying their work could potentially eliminate the disease. Researchers at Imperial College London genetically modified the insects so that the growth of malaria-causing parasites in their guts was slowed.

Scientists Engineer Mosquitoes That Can’t Transmit Malaria

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C. Murez,  US News,  2022.
The fight against malaria could hinge on genetically engineered mosquitoes that have something called "gene drive."Researchers from the Transmission: Zero team at Imperial College London report that they have engineered mosquitoes that slow the growth in their gut of the ...

Mosquitoes that can’t spread malaria engineered by scientists

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2022.
Scientists have engineered mosquitoes that slow the growth of malaria-causing parasites in their gut, preventing transmission of the disease to humans The genetic modification causes mosquitoes to produce compounds in their guts that stunt the growth of parasites, meaning they ...

Scientists engineer mosquitoes that can’t spread malaria

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S. Varshney,  Gamacher Central,  2022.
Scientists have engineered mosquitoes that slow the growth of malaria-causing parasites in their gut, preventing transmission of the disease to humans. The genetic modification causes mosquitoes to produce compounds in their guts that stunt the growth of parasites, meaning they ...

Mosquitoes with honeybee DNA could tame malaria

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R. Blakely,  The Times,  2022.
A new form of genetically engineered mosquito could reduce the spread of malaria in Africa, a study suggests. The addition of DNA from a honeybee and genetic material from the African clawed frog prompt the new mosquitoes to produce compounds to stunt the growth of the parasite ...

Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Prevented the Growth of Malaria-causing Parasites in Their Gut

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P. Mozter,  Nature World News 2022,  2022.
Abstract: Scientists have created mosquitoes that inhibit the development of malaria-causing parasites in their stomachs, therefore decreasing disease transmission to people. The genetic change allows mosquitoes to create substances in their intestines that inhibit parasite ...

Fitness effects of CRISPR endonucleases in Drosophila melanogaster populations

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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 ...

Mosquitoes are being genetically modified so they can’t spread malaria

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M. Le Page,  New Scientist,  2022.
Gene editing mosquitoes so they die before malaria parasites can develop inside them could stop the spread of the deadly parasite entirely,

Scientists engineer mosquitoes that can’t spread malaria

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Imperial College London,  Phys Org,  2022.
Scientists have engineered mosquitoes that slow the growth of malaria-causing parasites in their gut, preventing transmission of the disease to humans. The genetic modification causes mosquitoes to produce compounds in their guts that stunt the growth of parasites, meaning they ...

Extreme GM “extinction technology” of gene drives presented as “natural”

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GM Watch,  GM Watch,  2022.
Now similar Orwellian moves are happening in the area of gene drives. A gene drive is a genetic engineering technology that forces a particular genetic modification through a population by changing the natural rules of inheritance, usually to ensure that it is increasingly – ...

Daisy-chain gene drives: The role of low cut-rate, resistance mutations, and maternal deposition

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S. A. N. Verkuijl, M. A. E. Anderson, L. Alphey and M. B. Bonsall,  PLOS Genetics,  18:e1010370. 2022.
Author summary Reducing the harm of pest species by the introgression of traits into a wild population is often limited by the difficulties of mass rearing and release of modified individuals. Gene drives present an opportunity to substantially reduce the release frequencies ...

Humans Have a Long History of Making ‘Very Bad Decisions’ to Save Animals

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T. McDonnell,  The New York Times,  2022.
Environmental reporter Tim McDonnell on the potential negative consequences of animal conservation efforts. McDonnell highlights Target Malaria’s research on gene drive to “eliminate malaria-carrying mosquitos” and quotes New Zealand researcher Philipp Messer saying that ...

A detailed landscape of CRISPR-Cas-mediated plant disease and pest management

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S. Karmakar, P. Das, D. Panda, K. Xie, M. J. Baig and K. A. Molla,  Plant Science,  323:111376. 2022.
Genome editing technology has rapidly evolved to knock-out genes, create targeted genetic variation, install precise insertion/deletion and single nucleotide changes, and perform large-scale alteration. The flexible and multipurpose editing technologies have started playing a ...

Applications of gene drive systems for population suppression of insect pests

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M. Asad, D. Liu, J. Chen and G. Yang,  Bulletin of Entomological Research,  2022.
Population suppression is an effective way for controlling insect pests and disease vectors, which cause significant damage to crop and spread contagious diseases to plants, animals and humans. Gene drive systems provide innovative opportunities for the insect pests population ...

ISAAA Policy Brief: Risk Assessment for Gene Drive Organisms

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Anonymous,  ISAAA,  2022.
Gene drive is a genetic phenomenon that occurs in nature and causes a selected trait to spread rapidly through a species via sexual reproduction over generations, potentially becoming increasingly common within a specific species. Gene drive systems are being developed in the ...

A confinable female-lethal population suppression system in the malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae

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A. L. Smidler, J. J. Pai, R. A. Apte, H. M. Sánchez C, R. M. Corder, E. J. Gutiérrez, N. Thakre, I. Antoshechkin, J. M. Marshall and O. S. Akbari,  bioRxiv,  2022.08.30.505861. 2022.
Malaria is among the world’s deadliest diseases, predominantly affecting sub-Saharan Africa, and killing over half a million people annually. Controlling the principal vector, the mosquito Anopheles gambiae, as well as other anophelines, is among the most effective methods to ...

Genetic Tools for Integrated Management of Pests on Honeybees in the Tropics

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M. Pattabhiramaiah, S. Mallikarjunaiah and D. Brueckner,  Genetic Methods and Tools for Managing Crop Pests,  2022.
The Asian honeybee is endemic to Asia where it has been used for honey production and pollination services from time immemorial. They are integral to modern agricultural productivity and to survival and vitality of natural ecosystems. However, recent declines in populations and ...

Environmentally appropriate vector control is facilitated by standard metrics for simulation-based evaluation

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V. N. Vásquez, M. R. Reddy and J. M. Marshall,  Frontiers in Tropical Diseases,  3. 2022.
As anthropogenic factors contribute to the introduction and expansion of new and established vector species, the geographic incidence of mosquito-borne disease is shifting. Computer simulations, informed by field data where possible, facilitate the cost-effective evaluation of ...

Natural selfish genetic elements should not be defined as gene drives

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M. A. Wells and R. A. Steinbrecher,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  119:e2201142119. 2022.
Gene drives are increasingly discussed in the political realm,and how the term is defined therefore has important impli-cations. The opinion piece from Alphey et al. (1) identifies alack of consensus on the definition and makes explicitchanges in how the terminology is being used ...

A multiplexed, confinable CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive propagates in caged Aedes aegypti populations

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M. A. E. Anderson, E. Gonzalez, M. P. Edgington, J. X. D. Ang, D.-K. Purusothaman, L. Shackleford, K. Nevard, S. A. N. Verkuijl, T. Harvey-Samuel, P. T. Leftwich, K. Esvelt and L. Alphey,  bioRxiv,  2022.08.12.503466. 2022.
Here, we test the regulatory sequences from the Ae. aegypti benign gonial cell neoplasm (bgcn) homolog to express Cas9 in the germline to find an expression timing more conducive to homing. We also created a separate multiplexing (targeting multiple different sites within the ...

Harnessing Wolbachia cytoplasmic incompatibility alleles for confined gene drive: a modeling study

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J. Li and J. Champer,  bioRxiv,  2022.08.09.503337. 2022.
By using both mathematical and simulation models, we found that a drive containing CifA and CifB together create a confined drive with a moderate to high introduction threshold. When introduced separately, they act as a self-limiting drive. We observed that the performance of ...

Reflection on the Challenges, Accomplishments, and New Frontiers of Gene Drives

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M. Melesse Vergara, J. Labbé and J. Tannous,  BioDesign Research,  2022:9853416. 2022.
Ongoing pest and disease outbreaks pose a serious threat to human, crop, and animal lives, emphasizing the need for constantgenetic discoveries that could serve as mitigation strategies. Gene drives are genetic engineering approaches discovered decadesago that may allow quick, ...

A theory of resistance to multiplexed gene drive demonstrates the significant role of weakly deleterious natural genetic variation

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B. S. Khatri and A. Burt,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  119:e2200567119. 2022.
CRISPR-based gene drives have the potential for controlling natural populations of disease vectors, such as malaria-carrying mosquitoes in sub-Saharan Africa. If successful, they hold promise of significantly reducing the burden of disease and death from malaria and many other ...

What do we mean by “Target Organism” in Target Malaria’s gene drive research?

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J. B. Connolly,  Target Malaria,  2022.
In the wild and in laboratory settings, sibling mosquito species can successfully mate to produce viable offspring, regardless of whether they are vectors or not. Importantly, females, but not males, of these offspring can be fertile. Nonetheless, the likelihood of finding such ...

Population replacement gene drive characteristics for malaria elimination in a range of seasonal transmission settings: a modelling study

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S. Leung, N. Windbichler, E. A. Wenger, C. A. Bever and P. Selvaraj,  Malaria Journal,  21:226. 2022.
BACKGROUND: Gene drives are a genetic engineering method where a suite of genes is inherited at higher than Mendelian rates and has been proposed as a promising new vector control strategy to reinvigorate the fight against malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: Using an ...

Operationalizing stakeholder engagement for gene drive research in malaria elimination in Africa-translating guidance into practice

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L. Pare Toe, B. Dicko, R. Linga, N. Barry, M. Drabo, N. Sykes and D. Thizy,  Malaria Journal,  21:225. 2022.
Gene drive mosquitoes are increasingly considered a potential transformational tool for vector control of malaria mosquitoes. As part of efforts to promote responsible research in this field, a number of guidance documents have been published by the World Health Organization, ...

Comprehensive characterization of a transgene insertion in a highly repetitive, centromeric region of Anopheles mosquitoes

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M. Vitale, C. Leo, T. Courty, N. Kranjc, J. B. Connolly, G. Morselli, C. Bamikole, R. E. Haghighat-Khah, F. Bernardini and S. Fuchs,  Pathogens and Global Health,  2022.
The availability of the genomic sequence of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae has in recent years sparked the development of transgenic technologies with the potential to be used as novel vector control tools. These technologies rely on genome editing that confer traits able ...

Development of CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Gene-Drive Construct Targeting the Phenotypic Gene in Plutella xylostella

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M. Asad, D. Liu, J. Li, J. Chen and G. Yang,  Frontiers in Physiology,  13:938621. 2022.
The gene-drive system can ensure that desirable traits are transmitted to the progeny more than the normal Mendelian segregation. The clustered regularly interspersed palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) mediated gene-drive system has been demonstrated ...

Novel gene drive based on eliciting piRNA biogenesis in insect pests

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C. Henderson and B. Christina,  Rutgers Research,  2022.
Rutgers researchers have developed a potential permanent solution to persistent pest control issues by developing a system for genetic modification which could reduce the transmission of vector borne diseases (like malaria) from their insect vectors, or to establish expression ...

Manipulating Insect Sex Determination Pathways for Genetic Pest Management: Opportunities and Challenges

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A. Siddall, T. Harvey-Samuel, T. Chapman and P. T. Leftwich,  Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology,  10. 2022.
Sex determination pathways in insects are generally characterised by an upstream primary signal, which is highly variable across species, and that regulates the splicing of a suite of downstream but highly-conserved genes (transformer, doublesex and fruitless). In turn, these ...

Adversarial interspecies relationships facilitate population suppression by gene drive in spatially explicit models

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Y. Liu, W. Teo, H. Yang and J. Champer,  bioRxiv,  2022.05.08.491087. 2022.
Suppression gene drives are designed to bias their inheritance and increase in frequency in a population, disrupting an essential gene in the process. When the frequency is high enough, the population will be unable to reproduce above the replacement level and could be ...

The fight against malaria

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F. Ammache,  Year 2049,  2022.
Malaria is a disease we’ve been dealing with for thousands of years. Traces of the malaria parasite have been found in the remains of Egyptian mummies. Hippocrates described the fevers caused by malaria in Ancient Greece. The mosquito-filled Pontine Marshes protected Ancient ...

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

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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 ...

Podcast: How do you solve a problem like malaria?

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A. Jha,  The Economist,  2022.
SQUASHING MALARIA could, over the next three decades, save as many lives as covid-19 has taken. We explore new ways to fight infections: from the introduction of the first malaria vaccines, to genetically modified mosquitoes

UC San Diego Biology Lab Receives $1.4M Grant to Fight Malaria Spread

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E. Dameron,  UC San Diego News Center,  2022.
Scientists at the University of California San Diego are hard at work on new genetic technologies intended for use in curbing mosquito populations, fighting the spread of malaria and mitigating the hazards associated with the deployment of gene-editing systems in the wild. That ...

Rescue by gene swamping as a gene drive deployment strategy

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K. D. Harris and G. Greenbaum,  bioRxiv,  2022.03.08.483503. 2022.
Gene drives are genetic constructs that can spread deleterious alleles with potential application to population suppression of harmful species. Given that a gene drive can potentially spill over to other populations or even other species, control measures and fail-safes ...

Gene drive mosquitoes can aid malaria elimination by retarding Plasmodium sporogonic development

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A. Hoermann, T. Habtewold, P. Selvaraj, G. Del Corsano, P. Capriotti, M. G. Inghilterra, K. M. Temesgen, G. K. Christophides and N. Windbichler,  bioRxiv,  2022.02.15.480588. 2022.
Gene drives hold promise for the genetic control of malaria vectors. The development of vector population modification strategies hinges on the availability of effector mechanisms impeding parasite development in transgenic mosquitoes. We augmented a midgut gene of the malaria ...

IMPACTOS AMBIENTAIS DA TÉCNICA DE GENE DRIVE PARA O CONTROLE DE EPIDEMIAS: ALCANCES E LIMITES DO PRINCÍPIO DA PRECAUÇÃO

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N. R. Furtado,  PERI Revista de Filosofia,  13. 2022.
The paper discusses the application of the precautionary principle in the management of environmental risks arising from the use of gene drives to control epidemics. Gene drives consist of a technique for creating genetically modified organisms, which are released into an ...

Weakly deleterious natural genetic variation amplifies probability of resistance in multiplexed gene drive systems

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B. S. Khatri and A. Burt,  bioRxiv,  2021.12.23.473701. 2021.
Evolution of resistance is a major barrier to successful deployment of gene drive systems to suppress natural populations. Multiplexed guide RNAs that require resistance mutations in all target cut sites is a promising strategy to overcome resistance. Using novel stochastic ...

Public Deliberation about Gene Editing in the Wild

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M. K. Gusmano, G. E. Kaebnick, K. J. Maschke, C. P. Neuhaus and B. C. Wills,  Hastings Center Report,  51 Suppl 2:S2-s10. 2021.
Genetic editing technologies have long been used to modify domesticated nonhuman animals and plants. Recently, attention and funding have also been directed toward projects for modifying nonhuman organisms in the shared environment-that is, in the "wild." Interest in gene editing ...

Empowering Indigenous Knowledge in Deliberations on Gene Editing in the Wild

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R. Taitingfong and A. Ullah,  Hastings Center Report,  51 Suppl 2:S74-s84. 2021.
Proposals to release genetically engineered organisms in the wild raise complex ethical issues related to their safe and equitable implementation. While there is broad agreement that community and public engagement is vital to decision-making in this context, more discussion is ...

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

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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, ...

Mosquito transgenesis for malaria control

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S. Dong, Y. Dong, M. L. Simões and G. Dimopoulos,  Trends in Parasitology,  2021.
Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases. Because of the ineffectiveness of current malaria-control methods, several novel mosquito vector-based control strategies have been proposed to supplement existing control strategies. Mosquito transgenesis and gene drive have emerged as ...

GeneConvene Global Collaborative Webinar Series | Invasive Species Management: Informing Gene Drive Considerations

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David O'Brochta and Hector Quemada,  GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2021.
The management, control and elimination of invasive species involves solving problems that have analogs to those anticipating the use of gene drive technologies to control and eliminate malaria in Africa.  Avoiding unintended consequences from interventions designed to reduce or ...

Horizontal Transmission of the Symbiont Microsporidia MB in Anopheles arabiensis

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G. Nattoh, T. Maina, E. E. Makhulu, L. Mbaisi, E. Mararo, F. G. Otieno, T. Bukhari, T. O. Onchuru, E. Teal, J. Paredes, J. L. Bargul, D. M. Mburu, E. A. Onyango, G. Magoma, S. P. Sinkins and J. K. Herren,  Frontiers in Microbiology,  12. 2021.
The recently discovered Anopheles symbiont, Microsporidia MB, has a strong malaria transmission-blocking phenotype in Anopheles arabiensis, the predominant Anopheles gambiae species complex member in many active transmission areas in eastern Africa. The ability of Microsporidia ...

Autocatalytic-protection for an unknown locus CRISPR-Cas countermeasure for undesired mutagenic chain reactions

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E. Schonfeld, E. Schonfeld and D. Schonfeld,  Journal of Theoretical Biology,  528:110831. 2021.
The mutagenic chain reaction (MCR) is a genetic tool to use a CRISPR–Cas construct to introduce a homing endonuclease, allowing gene drive to influence whole populations in a minimal number of generations (Esvelt et al., 2014, Gantz and Bier, 2015, Gantz and Bier, 2016). The ...

The legal regulation of gene drive technologies

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C. Elves,  Univeristy of Oxford,  2021.
Gene drive technologies purport to provide a panacea and yet in doing so present unprecedented risks that threaten to change, potentially irreversibly, the way in which we live in the world. Gene drive technologies raise questions about what ends societies ought to seek for their ...

Why do you think a gene drive approach could help with malaria and dengue?

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Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research,  2021.
Why do you think a gene drive approach could help with malaria and dengue? 

How do local communities participate in gene drive research?

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Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research,  2021.
How do local communities participate in gene drive research?

ReMOT Control Delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 Ribonucleoprotein Complex to Induce Germline Mutagenesis in the Disease Vector Mosquitoes Culex pipiens pallens (Diptera: Culicidae)

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X. X. Li, Y. Xu, H. B. Zhang, H. T. Yin, D. Zhou, Y. Sun, L. Ma, B. Shen and C. L. Zhu,  Journal of Medical Entomology,  58. 2021.
The wide distribution of Culex (Cx.) pipiens complex mosquitoes makes it difficult to prevent the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases in humans. Gene editing using CRISPR/Cas9 is an effective technique with the potential to solve the growing problem of mosquito-borne ...

Playing God and tampering with nature: popular labels for real concerns in synthetic biology

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L. Carter, A. Mankad, E. V. Hobman and N. B. Porter,  Transgenic Research,  2021.
We present the findings from a large Australian study (N = 4593) which suggests ‘playing God’ objections and their variants can be multilayered and, at times, accompanied by meaningful information about risk perceptions. We use qualitative analysis of ope

His Passion Was Contagious

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D. C. McCool,  Notre Dame Magazine,  2021.
Craig was an entomologist and vector biologist whose interest in mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit to people was as contagious as the pathogens themselves. Hesburgh could not have chosen a more driven faculty member. In his 38 years at Notre Dame, before he died in 1995 ...

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

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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 ...

Making gene drive biodegradable

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J. Zapletal, N. Najmitabrizi, M. Erraguntla, M. A. Lawley, K. M. Myles and Z. N. Adelman,  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,  376:20190804. 2020.
Here, we consider the inclusion of self-elimination mechanisms into the design of homing-based gene drive transgenes. This approach not only caused the excision of the gene drive transgene, but also generates a transgene-free allele resistant to further action by the gene drive. ...

The Antiviral Small-Interfering RNA Pathway Induces Zika Virus Resistance in Transgenic Aedes aegypti

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A. E. Williams, I. Sanchez-Vargas, W. R. Reid, J. Y. Lin, A. W. E. Franz and K. E. Olson,  Viruses,  12:18. 2020.
We used CRISPR/Cas9 to re-target a previously characterized locus (Chr2:321382225) and engineered mosquitoes expressing an inverted repeat (IR) dsRNA against the NS3/4A region of the ZIKV genome. Small RNA analysis revealed that the IR effector triggered the mosquito's siRNA ...

A patent review on strategies for biological control of mosquito vector

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K. Parihar, M. Telang and A. Ovhal,  World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology,  36:23. 2020.
This paper presents a comprehensive technology overview of patent documents disclosing biological agents for mosquito control. The patent analysis revealed that comparable number of patent documents were filed in two technology categories: non-recombinant agents and genetically ...

A Gene Drive Could Wipe Out Mosquitoes. But What If We Want To Turn It Off?

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A. Winkler,  freethink,  2020.
Gene drives are powerful tools: they allow scientists to hack how animals pass down genes to their offspring. They could allow us to wipe out malaria-carrying mosquitoes, preserve endangered species, or fight off crop-eating pests. But once it's out in the wild, a gene drive ...

Advances in genetic engineering test democracy’s capacity for good decision-making

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N. Kofler and R. Taitingfong,  Boston Globe,  2020.
New advances in genetic engineering and their application for environmental conservation and public health are further testing our democracy’s capacity for good decision-making. With minimal public input, the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved the release of ...

GeneConvene Global Collaborative | Research and Innovation for biodiversity: what role for gene drive research?

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EP Intergroup CCBSD,  European Bureau of Conservation and Development,  2020.
This webinar will provide an overview of how gene drive works and the problems it seeks to solve, introduce the most advanced research projects on gene drive in the sector of public health and conservation and present the work that international and European bodies such as WHO, ...

Gene Drive Control Worry Eased by Genetic Neutralizing Elements

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Staff,  Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News,  2020.
Bier and his colleagues have developed two new active genetic systems that address such risks by halting or eliminating gene drives in the wild, offering two new solutions based on elements developed in the common fruit fly. T

Active Genetic Neutralizing Elements for Halting or Deleting Gene Drives

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X.-R. S. Xu, E. A. Bulger, V. M. Gantz, C. Klanseck, S. R. Heimler, A. Auradkar, J. B. Bennett, L. A. Miller, S. Leahy, S. S. Juste, A. Buchman, O. S. Akbari, J. M. Marshall and E. Bier,  Molecular Cell,  2020.
Here we describe two self-copying (or active) guide RNA-only genetic elements, called e-CHACRs and ERACRs. These elements use Cas9 produced in trans by a gene drive either to inactivate the cas9 transgene (e-CHACRs) or to delete and replace the gene drive (ERACRs).

Maintenance management and eradication of established aquatic invaders

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D. Simberloff,  Hydrobiologia,  22. 2020.
The rapid development of technologies based on genetics has engendered excitement about possibly eradicating or controlling terrestrial invaders, and such technologies may also prove useful for certain aquatic invaders. Methods of particular interest, alone or in various ...

The future of beef might be a sausage fest

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N. Johnson,  grist,  2020.
N. Johnson. (2020) grist. A media report on the creation of a cow with a sex ratio altering genetic change expected to lead to 3/4 of the cow's offspring being males. This type of sex ratio distortion results in gene drive and is also being considered to help control populations ...

Meet Cosmo the Frankenbull: Scientists genetically engineer a bull calf so that 75 per cent of its offspring will be male

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J. Pinkstone,  Daily Mail,  2020.
J. Pinkstone (2020). Daily Mail. A media report on the creation of a cow with a sex ratio altering genetic change expected to lead to 3/4 of the cow's offspring being males. This type of sex ratio distortion results in gene drive and is also being considered to help control ...

Meet the first genetically modified bull. Why did scientists change it

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J. Kessler,  Free News,  2020.
J. Kessler (2020). Free News. UC Davis scientists have successfully introduced a bovine embryo, or the bovine SRY gene, which is responsible for the development of the male. This is the first demonstration of targeted gene insertion for large DNA sequences through embryo-mediated ...

Small-Molecule Control of Super-Mendelian Inheritance in Gene Drives

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V. López Del Amo, B. S. Leger, K. J. Cox, S. Gill, A. L. Bishop, G. D. Scanlon, J. A. Walker, V. M. Gantz and A. Choudhary,  Cell Reports,  31:107841. 2020.
Summary Synthetic CRISPR-based gene-drive systems have tremendous potential in public health and agriculture, such as for fighting vector-borne diseases or suppressing crop pest populations. These elements can rapidly spread in a population by breaching the inheritance limit of ...

Field performance of sterile male mosquitoes released from an uncrewed aerial vehicle

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J. Bouyer, N. J. Culbert, A. H. Dicko, M. G. Pacheco, J. Virginio, M. C. Pedrosa, L. Garziera, A. T. M. Pinto, A. Klaptocz, J. Germann, T. Wallner, G. Salvador-Herranz, R. A. Herrero, H. Yamada, F. Balestrino and M. J. B. Vreysen,  Science Robotics,  5:10. 2020.
Genetic control methods of mosquito vectors of malaria, dengue, yellow fever, and Zika are becoming increasingly popular due to the limitations of other techniques such as the use of insecticides. The sterile insect technique is an effective genetic control method to manage ...

CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive technology to control transmission of vector-borne parasitic infections

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M. Nateghi Rostami,  Parasite Immunology,  preprint:e12762. 2020.
Gene drive is the process of copying of an endonuclease-containing cassette that leads to increased frequency of inheritance of the desired traits in a targeted population. CRISPR/Cas9 technology is advancing genetic manipulation of insects in the field of gene drive ...

Can CRISPR gene drive work in pest and beneficial haplodiploid species?

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J. Li, O. Aidlin Harari, A.-L. Doss, L. L. Walling, P. W. Atkinson, S. Morin and B. E. Tabashnik,  Evolutionary Applications,  2020.
Gene drives based on CRISPR/Cas9 have the potential to reduce the enormous harm inflicted by crop pests and insect vectors of human disease, as well as to bolster valued species. In contrast with extensive empirical and theoretical studies in diploid organisms, little is known ...

The development of complex and controversial innovations. Genetically modified mosquitoes for malaria eradication

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V. Cisnetto and J. Barlow,  Research Policy,  49:103917. 2020.
e use a longitudinal process approach and qualitative system dynamics modelling to study the development of genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes for malaria eradication in an African country.

Bioethical issues in genome editing by CRISPR-Cas9 technology

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F. B. Ayanoglu, A. E. Elcin and Y. M. Elcin,  Turkish Journal of Biology,  44:110-120. 2020.
Genome editing technologies have led to fundamental changes in genetic science. Among them, CRISPR-Cas9 technology particularly stands out due to its advantages such as easy handling, high accuracy, and low cost. It has made a quick introduction in fields related to humans, ...

Gene Drive – The Concept Explained

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GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2020.
This short video is intended to serve as a short tutorial that explains the general idea of 'drive' or 'gene drive' in the context of genetics.  It provides the viewer with a basic understanding of the key genetic processes underlying the patterns of inheritance with which most ...

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

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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 ...

Metaphor, Trust and Support for Non-native Species Control

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P. A. Kohl, S. J. Collins and M. Eichholz,  Environmental Communication,  14:672-685. 2020.
This experimental study used a representative sample of U.S. residents (N = 1,042) to test whether the use of the term "invasive" increases support for non-native species control efforts. The term invasive had a small influence on support for two out of three non-native species ...

Design and analysis of CRISPR-based underdominance toxin-antidote gene drives

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Champer, J., S. E. Champer, I. Kim, A. G. Clark and P. W. Messer,  bioRxiv,  861435:861435. 2019.
CRISPR gene drive systems offer a mechanism for transmitting a desirable transgene throughout a population for purposes ranging from vector-borne disease control to invasive species suppression. In this simulation study, we model and assess the performance of several CRISPR-based ...

Winning the tug-of-war between effector gene design and pathogen evolution in vector population replacement strategies

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Marshall, J. M., R. R. Raban, N. P. Kandul, J. R. Edula, T. M. León and O. S. Akbari,  Frontiers in Genetics,  10:1072. 2019.
While efforts to control malaria with available tools have stagnated, and arbovirus outbreaks persist around the globe, the advent of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-based gene editing has provided exciting new opportunities for genetics-based ...

Identification and characterisation of a Masculinizer homolog in the diamondback moth Plutella xylostella

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Harvey-Samuel, T., V. C. Norman, R. Carter, E. Lovett and L. Alphey,  Insect Molecular Biology,  2019:2019. 2019.
Recently, a novel sex-determination system was identified in the silkworm (Bombyx mori) in which a piRNA encoded on the female-specific W chromosome silences a Z-linked gene (Masculinizer) which would otherwise initiate male sex-determination and dosage compensation. ...

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

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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 ...

Effects of a male meiotic driver on male and female transcriptomes in the house mouse

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A. Lindholm, A. Sutter, S. Kunzel, D. Tautz and H. Rehrauer,  Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences,  286:1-8. 2019.
Not all genetic loci follow Mendel's rules, and the evolutionary consequences of this are not yet fully known. Genomic conflict involving multiple loci is a likely outcome, as restoration of Mendelian inheritance patterns will be selected for, and sexual conflict may also arise ...

Evolutionary simulations of Z-linked suppression gene drives

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L. Holman,  Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences,  286:1-9. 2019.
Synthetic gene drives may soon be used to suppress or eliminate populations of disease vectors, pathogens, invasive species, and agricultural pests. Recent proposals have focused on using Z-linked gene drives to control species with ZW sex determination, which include ...

Gene Drives: Dynamics and Regulatory Matters-A Report from the Workshop “Evaluation of Spatial and Temporal Control of Gene Drives,” April 4-5, 2019, Vienna

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B. Giese, J. L. Friess, N. H. Barton, P. W. Messer, F. Debarre, M. F. Schetelig, N. Windbichler, H. Meimberg and C. Boete,  Bioessays,  41:3. 2019.
Gene Drives are regarded as future tools with a high potential for population control. Due to their inherent ability to overcome the rules of Mendelian inheritance, gene drives (GD) may spread genes rapidly through populations of sexually reproducing organisms. A release of ...

A 2017 horizon scan of emerging issues for global conservation and biological diversity

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Sutherland, WJB, P.; Broad, S.; Clout, M.; Connor, B.; Cote, I. M.; Dicks, L. V.; Doran, H.; Entwistle, A. C.; Fleishman, E.; Fox, M.; Gaston, K. J.; Gibbons, D. W.; Jiang, Z.; Keim, B.; Lickorish, F. A.; Markillie, P.; Monk, K. A.; Pearce-Higgins, J. W.; Peck, L. S.; Pretty, J.; Spalding, M. D.; Tonneijck, F. H.; Wintle, B. C.; Ockendon, N.,  Trends in Ecology & Evolution,  32:31-40. 2019.
We present the results of our eighth annual horizon scan of emerging issues likely to affect global biological diversity, the environment, and conservation efforts in the future. The potential effects of these novel issues might not yet be fully recognized or understood by the ...

Herbicide resistant weeds: A call to integrate conventional agricultural practices, molecular biology knowledge and new technologies

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V. E. Perotti, A. S. Larran, V. E. Palmieri, A. K. Martinatto and H. R. Permingeat,  Plant Science,  290:110255. 2019.
Herbicide resistant (HR) weeds are of major concern in modern agriculture. This situation is exacerbated by the massive adoption of herbicide-based technologies along with the overuse of a few active ingredients to control weeds over vast areas year after year. Also, many other ...

Synthetic Biology: Research Needs for Assessing Environmental Impacts

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C. M. Warner, S. R. Carter, R. F. Lance, F. H. Crocker, H. N. Meeks, B. L. Adams, M. L. Magnuson, T. Rycroft, K. Pokrzywinski and E. J. Perkins,  Synthetic Biology 2020: Frontiers in Risk Analysis and Governance,  2019.
Synthetic biology and its applications have the potential to greatly improve economic development, public health, environmental stewardship, technological advancement, and many other areas. In May 2017, sixty individuals gathered in Lexington, Massachusetts for a workshop ...

Combinations of Spok genes create multiple meiotic drivers in Podospora

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A. A. Vogan, S. L. Ament-Velásquez, A. Granger-Farbos, J. Svedberg, E. Bastiaans, A. J. M. Debets, V. Coustou, H. Yvanne, C. Clavé, S. J. Saupe and H. Johannesson,  eLife,  8:e46454. 2019.
Meiotic drive is the preferential transmission of a particular allele during sexual reproduction. The phenomenon is observed as spore killing in multiple fungi. In natural populations of Podospora anserina, seven spore killer types (Psks) have been identified through classical ...

A family of killers

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M. De Carvalho and S. E. Zanders,  eLife,  8:e49211. 2019.
Spok genes are meiotic drivers that increase their own chances of transmission by killing gametes that do not inherit them.

Improving plant-resistance to insect-pests and pathogens: The new opportunities through targeted genome editing

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D. S. Bisht, V. Bhatia and R. Bhattacharya,  Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology,  96:65-76. 2019.
The advantages of high input agriculture are fading away due to degenerating soil health and adverse effects of climate change. Safeguarding crop yields in the changing environment and dynamics of pest and pathogens, has posed new challenges to global agriculture. Thus, ...

Genetic pest management technologies to control invasive rodents

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D. Kanavy and D. Threadgill,  Island invasives: scaling up to meet the challenge,  2019.
Many strategies exist to manage invasive pests on islands, ranging from poison to trapping, with varying degrees of success. Genetic technologies are increasingly being applied to insect pests, but so far, not to vertebrates. We are implementing a genetic strategy to eradicate ...

Trialling gene drives to control invasive species: what, where and how?

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T. Harvey-Samuel, K. J. Campbell, M. Edgington and L. Alphey,  Island invasives: scaling up to meet the challenge,  2019.
The control of invasive species would be enhanced through the addition of novel, more effective and sustainable pest management methods. One control option yet to be trialled in the field is to deploy transgene-based ‘Gene Drives’: technologies which force the inheritance of ...

Towards a genetic approach to invasive rodent eradications: assessing reproductive competitiveness between wild and laboratory mice

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M. Serr, N. Heard and J. Godwin,  Island invasives: scaling up to meet the challenge,  2019.
House mice are significant invasive pests, particularly on islands without native mammalian predators. As part of a multi-institutional project aimed at suppressing invasive mouse populations on islands, we aim to create heavily male-biased sex ratios with the goal of causing the ...

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

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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 ...

Killing two bugs with one stone: a perspective for targeting multiple pest species by incorporating reproductive interference into sterile insect technique

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Honma, AK, N.; Noriyuki, S.,  Pest Management Science,  75:571-577. 2019.
The sterile insect technique is an environmentally friendly method to control and even eradicate agricultural and veterinary insect pests without using chemical pesticides in excess. However, the continuous production and release of sterile insects is economically costly and ...

MGDrivE: A modular simulation framework for the spread of gene drives through spatially-explicit mosquito populations

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Sánchez C, HMW, Sean L.; Bennett, Jared B.; Marshall, John M.,  Methods in Ecology and Evolution,  10:1-24. 2019.
Malaria, dengue, Zika, and other mosquito-borne diseases continue to pose a major global health burden through much of the world, despite the widespread distribution of insecticide-based tools and antimalarial drugs. The advent of CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing and its ...

Engineered resistance to Zika virus in transgenic Aedes aegypti expressing a polycistronic cluster of synthetic small RNAs

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Buchman, AG, S.; Li, M.; Antoshechkin, I.; Li, H. H.; Wang, H. W.; Chen, C. H.; Klein, M. J.; Duchemin, J. B.; Paradkar, P. N.; Akbari, O. S.,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,  116:3656-3661. 2019.
Recent Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreaks have highlighted the necessity for development of novel vector control strategies to combat arboviral transmission, including genetic versions of the sterile insect technique, artificial infection with Wolbachia to reduce population size and/or ...

CRISPR in Parasitology: Not Exactly Cut and Dried!

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Bryant, JMB, S.; Glover, L.; Hutchinson, S.; Rachidi, N.,  Trends in Parasitology,  35:409-422. 2019.
CRISPR/Cas9 technology has been developing rapidly in the field of parasitology, allowing for the dissection of molecular processes with unprecedented efficiency. Optimization and implementation of a new technology like CRISPR, especially in nonmodel organisms, requires ...

The EU regulatory framework on genetically modified organisms (GMOs)

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Bruetschy, C,  Transgenic Research,  28:169-174. 2019.
The European Union (EU) legislation on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) aims to ensure a high level of protection for human, animal and environmental health and a well-functioning EU internal market. The framework regulates the release of GMOs into the environment and their ...

A genetic system for biasing the sex ratio in mice

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Yosef, IEB, Liat; Globus, Rea; Shlomovitz, Inbar; Munitz, Ariel; Gerlic, Motti; Qimron, Udi,  EMBO reports,  20:e48269. 2019.
Biasing the sex ratio of populations of different organisms, including plants, insects, crustacean, and fish, has been demonstrated by genetic and non-genetic approaches. However, biasing the sex ratio of mammalian populations has not been demonstrated genetically. Here, we ...

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

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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 ...

Gene driving the farm: who decides, who owns, and who benefits?

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Montenegro de Wit, M,  Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems,  43:1054-1074. 2019.
This commentary essay explores the social and ecological implications of gene-driving agriculture.

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

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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 ...

Ecological effects on underdominance threshold drives for vector control

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D. Khamis, C. El Mouden, K. Kura and M. B. Bonsall,  Journal of Theoretical Biology,  456:1-15. 2018.
Here, ecological and epidemiological dynamics are coupled to a model of mosquito genetics to investigate theoretically the impact of different types of underdominance gene drive on disease prevalence. We model systems with two engineered alleles carried either on the same pair ...

Why is this African village letting mosquitoes in?

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BBC,  BBC,  2018.
This is a BBC spot about the first release of genetically modified mosquitoes in Africa by the Target Malaria team. Very little information about gene drive but the context of this spot is notable.

A swarm of mutant mosquitoes is out to eradicate malaria

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O'Mahony, J,  Wired,  2018.
Over the next year in the village of Bana, Burkina Faso, a group of scientists will set loose up to 10,000 mosquitoes sprinkled with fluorescent dust. The sterile, male swarm will represent the first ever release of a genetically modified, malaria carrying mosquito species into ...

Gene Drive

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Collins, CH,  Scientific American,  2018.
Research into a genetic engineering technology that can permanently change the traits of a population or even an entire species is progressing rapidly. The approach uses gene drives—genetic elements that pass from parents to unusually high numbers of their offspring, thereby ...

Pest demography critically determines the viability of synthetic gene drives for population control

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K. E. Wilkins, T. A. A. Prowse, P. Cassey, P. Q. Thomas and J. V. Ross,  Mathematical Biosciences,  305:160-169. 2018.
Synthetic gene drives offer a novel solution for the control of invasive alien species. CRISPR-based gene drives can positively bias their own inheritance, and comprise a DNA sequence that is replicated by homologous recombination. Since gene drives can be positioned to silence ...

When Evolution Fights Back Against Genetic Engineering

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Borel, B,  Quanta Magazine,  2018.
In a crowded auditorium at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in August, Philipp Messer, a population geneticist at Cornell University, took the stage to discuss a powerful and controversial new application for genetic engineering: gene drives.; ; Gene drives can force a ...

Gene drives accelerate evolution – but we need brakes

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Tsai, Y-HP, Tony,  The Conversation,  2018.
Worried about mice in the kitchen? Fed up with pigeons on your way to work? Teed off by weeds on your lawn? Recent work points to a way that might just reduce – or even eliminate – unwanted species in a short period. The method is based on something called a gene drive – a ...

How science could wipe out disease-carrying mosquitoes and save lives

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Elliot, JK,  Global News,  2018.
Mosquitoes kill hundreds of thousands of people every year by spreading disease in tropical areas. They’re also the worst part of many cottage weekends and camping trips in North America.; ; But it doesn’t have to be that way.; ; Scientists are developing two methods for ...

Gene drive put to work for first time.

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Arnason, R,  The Western Producer,  2018.
A disruptive technology that potentially could eliminate or reduce the need for insecticides may soon be coming to market. In a paper published April 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of California, San Diego biologists announced they have ...

Gene Drives

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SciLine,  SciLine,  2018.
For many years now, scientists have been able to alter genes inside microbial, plant, and animal cells to change organisms’ traits, creating, for example, plants that produce their own protective insecticides and fish that grow to maturity almost twice as fast as normal. But ...

Gene Drives – Wundermittel? Biowaffe?

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Swiss Academy of Sciences,  2018.
Gene drives are genetic elements that skew the pattern of inheritance of a given characteristic in sexually reproduc- ing organisms. They can be used to spread a characteristic that can alter or even reduce the numbers of individuals in wild populations of a certain species.

Current CRISPR gene drive systems are likely to be highly invasive in wild populations

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Noble, CA, Ben; Church, George M.; Esvelt, Kevin M.; Nowak, Martin A.,  eLife,  7:e33423. 2018.
Recent reports have suggested that self-propagating CRISPR-based gene drive systems are unlikely to efficiently invade wild populations due to drive-resistant alleles that prevent cutting. Here we develop mathematical models based on existing empirical data to explicitly test ...

Engineered Reciprocal Chromosome Translocations Drive High Threshold, Reversible Population Replacement in Drosophila

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Buchman, ABI, Tobin; Marshall, John M.; Akbari, Omar S.; Hay, Bruce A.,  ACS Synthetic Biology,  7:1359-1370. 2018.
Replacement of wild insect populations with transgene-bearing individuals unable to transmit disease or survive under specific environmental conditions using gene drive provides a self-perpetuating method of disease prevention. Mechanisms that require the gene drive element and ...

Gene drive systems: Do they have a place in agricultural weed management?

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Neve, P,  Pest Management Science,  74:2672-2679. 2018.
There is a pressing need for novel control techniques in agricultural weed management. Direct genetic control of agricultural pests encompasses a range of techniques to introduce and spread novel, fitness-reducing genetic modifications through pest populations. Recently, the ...

Identifying and detecting potentially adverse ecological outcomes associated with the release of gene-drive modified organisms

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Hayes, KRH, G. R.; Dana, G. V.; Foster, S. D.; Ford, J. H.; Thresher, R.; Ickowicz, A.; Peel, D.; Tizard, M.; De Barro, P.; Strive, T.; Dambacher, J. M.,  Journal of Responsible Innovation,  5:S139-S158. 2018.
Synthetic gene drives could provide new solutions to a range of old problems such as controlling vector-borne diseases, agricultural pests and invasive species. In this paper, we outline methods to identify hazards and detect potentially adverse ecological outcomes at the ...

Identifying knowledge gaps for gene drive research to control invasive animal species: The next CRISPR step

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Moro, DB, Margaret; Kennedy, Malcolm; Campbell, Susan; Tizard, Mark,  Global Ecology and Conservation,  13:e00363. 2018.
Invasive animals have been linked to the extinctions of native wildlife, and to significant agricultural financial losses or impacts. Current approaches to control invasive species require ongoing resources and management over large geographic scales, and often result in the ...

Gene drive inhibition by the anti-CRISPR proteins AcrIIA2 and AcrIIA4 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

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Basgall, EMG, S. C.; Goeckel, M. E.; Giersch, R. M.; Roggenkamp, E.; Schrock, M. N.; Halloran, M.; Finnigan, G. C.,  Microbiology-Sgm,  164:464-474. 2018.
Given the widespread use and application of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas gene editing system across many fields, a major focus has been the development, engineering and discovery of molecular means to precisely control and regulate ...

Transmission and drive involving parasitic B chromosomes

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Jones, RN,  Genes,  9:e388. 2018.
B chromosomes (Bs) are enigmatic additional elements in the genomes of thousands of species of plants, animals, and fungi. How do these non-essential, harmful, and parasitic chromosomes maintain their presence in their hosts, making demands on all the essential functions of their ...

Rats join mosquitoes as targets for ‘gene drive’ pest control.

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Hirschler, B,  Reuters,  2017.
Rodents have joined mosquitoes in the cross-hairs of scientists working on a next-generation genetic technology known as “gene drive” to control pests.; Researchers in Scotland said on Tuesday they had developed two different ways to disrupt female fertility in rats and mice, ...

Open, Local, and Obligated

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Yale University,  2017.
Kevin Esvelt, PhD, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab and leader of the Sculpting Evolution Group talks about the need for new scientific structures based on transparency and open. This lecture was given at the 2017 Editing Nature Summit.

‘Gene Drives’ Are Too Risky for Field Trials, Scientists Say

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Zimmer, C,  New York Times,  2017.
In 2013, scientists discovered a new way to precisely edit genes — technology called Crispr that raised all sorts of enticing possibilities. Scientists wondered if it might be used to fix hereditary diseases, for example, or to develop new crops.; ; One of the more intriguing ...

How Genetically Modified Mice Could One Day Save Island Birds

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Borel, B,  Audubon,  2017.
The silent black-and-white footage opens on a seemingly tranquil setting: a burrow where an Atlantic Petrel tends to its chick. Then mice begin scurrying in and out of frame. The dark blurs jostle the adult, darting up to the exposed chick and tearing off bloody bites. They’re ...

Illustrated experiment: modifying mosquitoes to save millions of lives

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Volpicelli, G,  Wired,  2017.
Malaria, a disease transmitted by a type of mosquito called Anopheles, kills 500,000 people every year, most of them in Africa. But Andrea Crisanti, professor of molecular parasitology at London's Imperial College, has a plan to eradicate it in many countries.

Is it time for synthetic biodiversity conservation?

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Piaggio, AJS, G.; Seddon, P. J.; Alphey, L.; Bennett, E. L.; Carlson, R. H.; Friedman, R. M.; Kanavy, D.; Phelan, R.; Redford, K. H.; Rosales, M.; Slobodian, L.; Wheeler, K.,  Trends in Ecology & Evolution,  32:97-107. 2017.
Evidence indicates that, despite some critical successes, current conservation approaches are not slowing the overall rate of biodiversity loss. The field of synthetic biology, which is capable of altering natural genomes with extremely precise editing, might offer the potential ...

Gene drives do not always increase in frequency: from genetic models to risk assessment

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de Jong, TJ,  Journal Fur Verbraucherschutz Und Lebensmittelsicherheit-Journal of Consumer Protection and Food Safety,  12:299-307. 2017.
Homing genes encode endonucleases that make a double stranded break in the DNA, destroying a target site on the homologous chromosome. When the cell repairs the break the homing allele is copied, converting a heterozygote into a homozygote. This results in gene drive (GD), an ...

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

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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 ...

A transatlantic perspective on 20 emerging issues in biological engineering

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Wintle, BCB, C. R.; Rhodes, C.; Molloy, J. C.; Millett, P.; Adam, L.; Breitling, R.; Carlson, R.; Casagrande, R.; Dando, M.; Doubleday, R.; Drexler, E.; Edwards, B.; Ellis, T.; Evans, N. G.; Hammond, R.; Haseloff, J.; Kahl, L.; Kuiken, T.; Lichman, B. R.; Matthewman, C. A.; Napier, J. A.; OhEigeartaigh, S. S.; Patron, N. J.; Perello, E.; Shapira, P.; Tait, J.; Takano, E.; Sutherland, W. J.,  eLife,  6:21. 2017.
Advances in biological engineering are likely to have substantial impacts on global society. To explore these potential impacts we ran a horizon scanning exercise to capture a range of perspectives on the opportunities and risks presented by biological engineering. We first ...

A large gene family in fission yeast encodes spore killers that subvert Mendel’s law

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Hu, WJ, Z. D.; Suo, F.; Zheng, J. X.; He, W. Z.; Du, L. L.,  eLife,  6:e28567. 2017.
Spore killers in fungi are selfish genetic elements that distort Mendelian segregation in their favor. It remains unclear how many species harbor them and how diverse their mechanisms are. Here, we discover two spore killers from a natural isolate of the fission yeast ...

Using Gene Drive to Control Malaria

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The Scientist,  The Scientist,  2016.
This article provides illustrations for how gene drive works, how gene drives spread, and how gene drive could be used to control malaria using population-wide gene knockout, skewed sex ratio, and population-wide gene knock-in techniques. Visit the article to view all ...

National Academies hit the brakes on gene drive-modified organisms

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

Gene drives: The good, the bad, and the hype

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Ouagrham-Gormley, SBV, Kathleen M.,  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,  2016.
Since the early 2000s, many advances in the life sciences, such as the artificial synthesis of the poliovirus and the gain-of-function experiments that enhanced the transmissibility of the H5N1 flu virus, have led to warnings that bioweapons development would soon be getting ...

Genetic Engineering and Diseases – Gene Drive & Malaria

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Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell,  2016.
This video focuses on the basic applications of gene drive to malaria eradication and leave the viewer with the question “what do you think?”

Extinctions to order: Gene-ocide.

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The Economist,  The Economist,  2016.
IN A competition to find the world’s least-loved animal, the mosquito would be hard to beat. Only a few species of the insect carry the parasites that cause human diseases such as West Nile virus, dengue and yellow fever, but the harm they cause is enormous. Malaria kills more ...

Biodiversity, GMOs, Gene Drives and the Militarised Mind

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Shiva, V,  Inter Press Service,  2016.
A recent report from the National Academy of Science of The United States, titled Gene Drives on the Horizon : Advancing Science, Navigating Uncertainty, and Aligning Research with Public Values”, warns:; “One possible goal of release of a gene-drive modified organism is to ...

Re-Coding for Conservation

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Hawkes, A,  Bay Nature Magazine,  2016.
very year, as summer turns to fall, the mouse population on the South Farallon Islands explodes to plague-like densities, numbering 490 mice per acre, among the highest found on any island in the world. The scientists who live and work there describe the assault of the invasive ...

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

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

When Extinction Is a Humanitarian Cause

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Adelman, Z,  MIT Technology Review,  2016.
Humans have driven species to extinction through our hunger, our ignorance, our desire for economic growth, and our indifference. Will one species of mosquito be the first we eliminate for humanitarian ; The mosquito is Aedes aegypti. It is commonly known as the yellow fever ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

R2d2 drives selfish sweeps in the house mouse

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Didion, JPM, A. P.; Yadgary, L.; Bell, T. A.; McMullan, R. C.; de Solorzano, L. O.; Britton-Davidian, J.; Bult, C. J.; Campbell, K. J.; Castiglia, R.; Ching, Y. H.; Chunco, A. J.; Crowley, J. J.; Chesler, E. J.; Forster, D. W.; French, J. E.; Gabriel, S. I.; Gatti, D. M.; Garland, T.; Giagia-Athanasopoulou, E. B.; Gimenez, M. D.; Grize, S. A.; Gunduz, I.; Holmes, A.; Hauffe, H. C.; Herman, J. S.; Holt, J. M.; Hua, K. J.; Jolley, W. J.; Lindholm, A. K.; Lopez-Fuster, M. J.; Mitsainas, G.; Mathias, M. D.; McMillan, L.; Ramalhinho, M. D. M.; Rehermann, B.; Rosshart, S. P.; Searle, J. B.; Shiao, M. S.; Solano, E.; Svenson, K. L.; Thomas-Laemont, P.; Threadgill, D. W.; Ventura, J.; Weinstock, G. M.; Pomp, D.; Churchill, G. A.; de Villena, F. P. M.,  Molecular Biology and Evolution,  33:1381-1395. 2016.
A selective sweep is the result of strong positive selection driving newly occurring or standing genetic variants to fixation, and can dramatically alter the pattern and distribution of allelic diversity in a population. Population-level sequencing data have enabled discoveries ...

What is a Gene Drive?

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STAT,  2015.
This video produced by STAT, an e-news site focusing on health and medicine (https://www.statnews.com/). This video simply illustrates what geneticists mean by gene drive, and how homing-based gene drive work. (Note: it does not indicate that there are other mechanisms of gene ...

Playing God with mosquitoes? We humans have loftier aims.

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Pugh, J,  The Conversation,  2015.
In a startling development in “gene-drive” technology, a team of researchers at the University of California has succeeded in creating genetically modified mosquitoes incapable of spreading the malaria parasite to humans, and which could potentially spread this trait rapidly ...

What’s a Gene Drive? And what are the risks and benefits?

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Risk Bites,  Arizona State University,  2015.
This video uses ‘white board cartooning’ as a means of illustrating concepts.

What is Gene Drive?

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Entomological Society of America,  2015.
A fact sheet from the Entomological Society of America.

The next generation of rodent eradications: Innovative technologies and tools to improve species specificity and increase their feasibility on islands

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Campbell, KJB, J.; Eason, C. T.; Glen, A. S.; Godwin, J.; Gould, F.; Holmes, N. D.; Howald, G. R.; Madden, F. M.; Ponder, J. B.; Threadgill, D. W.; Wegmann, A. S.; Baxter, G. S.,  Biological Conservation,  185:47-58. 2015.
Rodents remain one of the most widespread and damaging invasive alien species on islands globally. The current toolbox for insular rodent eradications is reliant on the application of sufficient anticoagulant toxicant into every potential rodent territory across an island. ...

Confinement of gene drive systems to local populations: A comparative analysis

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Marshall, JMH, B. A.,  Journal of Theoretical Biology,  294:153-171. 2012.
Mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever pose a major health problem through much of the world. One approach to disease prevention involves the use of selfish genetic elements to drive disease-refractory genes into wild mosquito populations. Recently engineered ...

Problem formulation in the environmental risk assessment for genetically modified plants

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Wolt, JDK, Paul; Raybould, Alan; Fitzpatrick, Julie W.; Burachik, Moisés; Gray, Alan; Olin, Stephen S.; Schiemann, Joachim; Sears, Mark; Wu, Felicia,  Transgenic Research,  19:425-436. 2010.
Problem formulation is the first step in environmental risk assessment (ERA) where policy goals, scope, assessment endpoints, and methodology are distilled to an explicitly stated problem and approach for analysis. The consistency and utility of ERAs for genetically modified (GM) ...

Evolution of the Schlafen genes, a gene family associated with embryonic lethality, meiotic drive, immune processes and orthopoxvirus virulence

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Bustos, ON, S.; Ayers, G.; Casola, C.; Perez-Lamigueiro, M. A.; Chippindale, P. T.; Pritham, E. J.; de la Casa-Esperon, E.,  Gene,  447:11-Jan. 2009.
Genes of the Schlafen family, first discovered in mouse, are expressed in hematopoietic cells and are involved in immune processes. Previous results showed that they are candidate genes for two major phenomena: meiotic drive and embryonic lethality (DDK syndrome). However, these ...

The distribution of B chromosomes across species

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Palestis, BGT, R.; Burt, A.; Jones, R. N.,  Cytogenetic and Genome Research,  106:151-158. 2004.
In this review we look at the broad picture of how B chromosomes are distributed across a wide range of species. We review recent studies of the factors associated with the presence of Bs across species, and provide new analyses with updated data and additional variables. The ...

Inverted meiosis and meiotic drive in mealybugs

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Bongiorni, SF, P.; Pippoletti, D.; Prantera, G.,  Chromosoma,  112:331-341. 2004.
In the males of lecanoid coccids, or mealybugs, an entire, paternally derived, haploid chromosome set becomes heterochromatic after the seventh embryonic mitotic cycle. In females, both haploid sets are euchromatic throughout the life cycle. In mealybugs, as in all homopteran ...

Nonrandom segregation during meiosis: the unfairness of females

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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 ...

Transmission ratio distortion due to the bl gene in table beet

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Austin, DG, I. L.,  Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science,  126:340-343. 2001.
The bl gene conditions a blotchy phenotype (irregular sectors of red and white root color) in table beet (Beta vulgaris ssp, vulgaris). Segregation of the bl gene was found to be consistent with a single recessive gene, however, some evidence for a departure from a single gene ...

Invasion of one insect species, Adalia bipunctata, by two different male-killing bacteria

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Hurst, GDDvdS, J. H. G.; Majerus, T. M. O.; Bertrand, D.; Zakharov, I. A.; Baungaard, J.; Volkl, W.; Stouthamer, R.; Majerus, M. E. N.,  Insect Molecular Biology,  8:133-139. 1999.
Male-killing bacteria, which are inherited through the female line and kill male progeny only, are known from five different orders of insect. Our knowledge of the incidence of these elements has stemmed from discovery of their phenotype in different species, Our estimate of the ...

Transmission ratio distortion at the INS-IGF2 VNTR

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Eaves, IAB, S. T.; Forster, P.; Ferber, K. M.; Ehrmann, D.; Wilson, A. J.; Bhattacharyya, S.; Ziegler, A. G.; Brinkmann, B.; Todd, J. A.,  Nature Genetics,  22:324-325. 1999.
Transmission ratio distortion (TRD) is defined as a statistically significant departure from mendelian transmission. So far, evidence of this in humans has been limited or controversial1,2,3,4, and the few established examples involve chromosome rearrangements in lower ...

Meiotic drive of chromosomal knobs reshaped the maize genome

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Buckler, ESP-D, T. L.; Buckler, C. S. K.; Dawe, R. K.; Doebley, J. F.; Holtsford, T. P.,  Genetics,  153:415-426. 1999.
Meiotic drive is the subversion of meiosis so that particular genes are preferentially transmitted to the progeny. Meiotic drive generally causes the preferential segregation of small regions of the genome; however, in maize we propose that meiotic drive is responsible for the ...

Sex ratio distortion in Acraea encedon (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae) is caused by a male-killing bacterium

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Jiggins, FMH, G. D. D.; Majerus, M. E. N.,  Heredity,  81:87-91. 1998.
Females of the butterfly Acraea encedon produce either entirely female offspring or males and females in an almost 1:1 sex ratio. The sex ratio produced is maternally inherited and was previously attributed to sex chromosome meiotic drive. We report that all-female lineages are ...

Selfish genes and meiotic drive

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Hurst, LD,  Nature,  391:223-223. 1998.
Work by Gerald Wilkinson and colleagues3 on stalk-eyed flies (Diopsidae), described on page 276, provides the strongest evidence to date about the nature of some of the genes females prefer. As their name suggests, stalk-eyed flies have their eyes perched on the end of ...

Wolbachia as a possible means of driving genes into populations

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Curtis, CFS, S. P.,  Parasitology,  116:S111-S115. 1998.
Cytoplasmic incompatibility consists of sterility in cross matings, the crossing type being maternally inherited. It can be explained by the action of Wolbachia symbionts which are transmitted through the egg cytoplasm and leave an imprint on the sperm which prevents it ...

Selfish DNA and breeding system in flowering plants

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Burt, AT, R.,  Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences,  265:141-146. 1998.
In many species, some individuals carry one or more B chromosomes: extra, or supernumerary chromosomes not part of the normal complement. In most well-studied cases, B's lower the fitness of their carrier and persist in populations only because of accumulation mechanisms ...

Segregation distortion of the CTG repeats at the myotonic dystrophy locus

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Chakraborty, RS, D. N.; Deka, R.; Yu, L. M.; Shriver, M. D.; Ferrell, R. E.,  American Journal of Human Genetics,  59:109-118. 1996.
Myotonic dystrophy (DM), an autosomal dominant neuromuscular disease, is caused by a CTG-repeat expansion, with affected individuals having greater than or equal to 50 repeats of this trinucleotide, at the DMPK locus of human chromosome 19q13.3. Severely affected individuals die ...

Meiotic drive an Myotonic Dystrophy – Reply

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Carey, NJ, K.; Nokelainen, P.; Peltonen, L.; Savontaus, M. L.; Juvonen, V.; Anvret, M.; Grandell, U.; Chotai, K.; Robertson, E.; Middletonprice, H.; Malcolm, S.,  Nature Genetics,  10:133-133. 1995.
Myotonic dystrophy (DM) is a trinucleotide disorder and in sub-clinical individuals there is considerable variation in the length of the CTG repeat. Two groups have recently analysed the patterns of segregation of different sized alleles at this locus and both report an excess of ...

Meiotic drive at the myotonic dystrophy locus

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Gennarelli, MD, B.; Baiget, M.; Martorell, L.; Novelli, G.,  Journal of Medical Genetics,  31:980-980. 1994.
The mutation underlying myotonic dystrophy (DM, MIM* 160900) is the expansion of a CTG trinucleotide repeat sequence at the 3' untranslated region of a protein kinase gene (MT-PK).' The kinetics of this process is influenced by the sex of the transmitting parent and size of the ...

Meiotic drive on aberrant Chromosome-1 in the mouse is determined by a linked distorter

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Agulnik, SIS, I. D.; Orlova, G. V.; Ruvinsky, A. O.,  Genetical Research,  61:91-96. 1993.
An aberrant chromosome 1 carrying an inverted fragment with two amplified DNA regions was isolated from wild populations of Mus musculus. Meiotic drive favouring the aberrant chromosome was demonstrated for heterozygous females. Its cause was preferential passage of aberrant ...

Meiotic drive for the aberrant Chromosome-1 in mice is determined by a linked distorter

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Agulnik, SIS, I. D.; Orlova, G. V.; Ruvinsky, A. O.,  Genetika,  28:47-57. 1992.
AN aberrant chromosome 1 carrying an inverted fragment with two amplified DNA regions was isolated from natural populations of Mus musculus. A meiotic drive favouring the aberrant chromosome was previously demonstrated for heterozygous females. The cause for this was the ...

Segregation distorters

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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 ...

Meiotic drive in female mice heterozygous for the HSR inserts on Chromosome-1

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Agulnik, SIA, A. I.; Ruvinsky, A. O.,  Genetical Research,  55:97-100. 1990.
Chromosome 1 with one or two long insertions has been previously found in natural mouse populations. The inheritance of chromosome 1 with two insertions from the Yakutsk population is analysed in this paper. It was demonstrated that heterozygous females transmit this chromosome ...

Meiotic drive of the aberrant Chromosome-1 in the house mouse

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Agulnik, SIA, A. I.; Ruvinsky, A. O.,  Genetika,  26:664-669. 1990.
Animals with aberrant chromosome 1 carrying one or two large insertions were earlier described in natural populations of Mus musculus. In the present work, inheritance of the aberrant chromosome 1 from the Yakutsk population was investigated. It was shown that 80-85% of the ...

Genetics-driving genes and chromosomes

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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 ...

Methods for replacement of malaria vector populations

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Curtis, CFG, P. M.,  American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene,  91:43-48. 1988.
The prospects are reviewed of replacement of malaria vector populations by harmless mosquito populations by means of: (i) ecologically competitive non-vector species; (ii) natural selection due to the harmfulness of being infected; (iii) selection for insecticide resistance ...

Population replacement in Culex fatigens by means of cytoplasmic incompatibility. Laboratory experiments with non-overlapping generations

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C. F. Curtis and T. Adak,  Bulletin of the World Health Organization,  51:249-255. 1974.
Bidirectional cytoplasmic incompatibility in the Culex pipiens complex appears to provide a mechanism for the replacement of a wild population by a strain refractory to filaria or a strain made partly sterile by a translocation. As a preliminary test of the feasibility of the ...