Keywords: homing drive

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

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 ...
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CRISPR/Cas9-Based Gene Drive Could Suppress Agricultural Pests

M. Kulikowski,  Current Science Daily,  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 ...
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New germline Cas9 promoters show improved performance for homing gene drive

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 ...
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Guerrilla eugenics: gene drives in heritable human genome editing

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

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

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 ...
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The Possibilities of Gene Drives for Managing Populations and Controlling Diseases

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 ...
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A CRISPR endonuclease gene drive reveals distinct mechanisms of inheritance bias

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

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

M. Metzloff, E. Yang, S. Dhole, A. G. Clark, P. W. Messer and J. Champer,  BMC Biol,  20:119. 2022.
BACKGROUND: Homing gene drives hold great promise for the genetic control of natural populations. However, current homing systems are capable of spreading uncontrollably between populations connected by even marginal levels of migration. This could represent a substantial ...
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Experimental demonstration of tethered gene drive systems for confined population modification or suppression

M. Metzloff, E. Yang, S. Dhole, A. G. Clark, P. W. Messer and J. Champer,  bioRxiv,  2021.05.29.446308. 2022.
Homing gene drives hold great promise for the genetic control of natural populations. However, current homing systems are capable of spreading uncontrollably between populations connected by even marginal levels of migration. This could represent a substantial sociopolitical ...
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Gene drive escape from resistance depends on mechanism and ecology

F. Cook, J. J. Bull and R. Gomulkiewicz,  Evolutionary Applications,  2022.
Abstract Gene drives can potentially be used to suppress pest populations, and the advent of CRISPR technology has made it feasible to engineer them in many species, especially insects. What remains largely unknown for implementations is whether antidrive resistance will evolve ...
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Toward a CRISPR-Cas9-Based Gene Drive in the Diamondback Moth Plutella xylostella

X. Xu, T. Harvey-Samuel, H. A. Siddiqui, J. X. D. Ang, M. E. Anderson, C. M. Reitmayer, E. Lovett, P. T. Leftwich, M. You and L. Alphey,  The CRISPR Journal,  5:224-236. 2022.
Promising to provide powerful genetic control tools, gene drives have been constructed in multiple dipteran insects, yeast, and mice for the purposes of population elimination or modification. However, it remains unclear whether these techniques can be applied to lepidopterans. ...
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Resistance to a CRISPR-based gene drive at an evolutionarily conserved site is revealed by mimicking genotype fixation

S. Fuchs, W. T. Garrood, A. Beber, A. Hammond, R. Galizi, M. Gribble, G. Morselli, T.-Y. J. Hui, K. Willis, N. Kranjc, A. Burt, A. Crisanti and T. Nolan,  PLOS Genetics,  17. 2021.
Author summary Gene drives have the potential to be applied as a novel control strategy of disease-transmitting mosquitoes, by spreading genetic traits that suppress or modify the target population. Many gene drive elements work by recognising and cutting a specific target ...
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Resistance to a CRISPR-based gene drive at an evolutionarily conserved site is revealed by mimicking genotype fixation

S. Fuchs, W. Garrood, A. Beber, A. Hammond, R. Galizi, M. Gribble, G. Morselli, T.-Y. Hui, K. Willis, N. Kranjc, A. Burt, T. Nolan and A. Crisanti,  bioRxiv,  2021.
CRISPR-based homing gene drives can be designed to disrupt essential genes whilst biasing their own inheritance, leading to suppression of mosquito populations in the laboratory. This class of gene drives relies on CRISPR-Cas9 cleavage of a target sequence and copying ...
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Converting endogenous genes of the malaria mosquito into simple non-autonomous gene drives for population replacement

A. Hoermann, S. Tapanelli, P. Capriotti, G. Del Corsano, E. K. G. Masters, T. Habtewold, G. K. Christophides and N. Windbichler,  eLife,  10. 2021.
Gene drives for mosquito population replacement are promising tools for malaria control. However, there is currently no clear pathway for safely testing such tools in endemic countries. The lack of well-characterized promoters for infection-relevant tissues and regulatory hurdles ...
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Evading resistance to gene drives

R. Gomulkiewicz, M. L. Thies and J. J. Bull,  Genetics,  217. 2021.
Here, we develop mathematical and computational models to identify conditions under which suppression drives will evade resistance, even if resistance is present initially. Previous models assumed resistance is allelic to the drive. We relax this assumption and show that linkage ...
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CRISPR gene drive efficiency and resistance rate is highly heritable with no common genetic loci of large effect

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 ...
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