Keywords: melanogaster
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Combined actions of bacteriophage-encoded genes in Wolbachia-induced male lethalityH. Arai, H. Anbutsu, Y. Nishikawa, M. Kogawa, K. Ishii, M. Hosokawa, S. R. Lin, M. Ueda, M. Nakai, Y. Kunimi, T. Harumoto, D. Kageyama, H. Takeyama and M. N. Inoue, iScience, 26:106842. 2023.
Some Wolbachia endosymbionts induce male killing, whereby male offspring of infected females are killed during development; however, the origin and diversity of the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we identified a 76 kbp prophage region specific to ... |
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Effects of Wolbachia on Transposable Element Expression Vary Between Drosophila melanogaster Host GenotypesA. T. Eugénio, M. S. P. Marialva and P. Beldade, Genome Biology Evolution, 15. 2023.
Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive DNA sequences capable of changing position in host genomes, thereby causing mutations. TE insertions typically have deleterious effects but they can also be beneficial. Increasing evidence of the contribution of TEs to adaptive evolution ... |
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Ovarian Transcriptional Response to Wolbachia Infection in D. melanogaster in the Context of Between-Genotype Variation in Gene ExpressionS. I. Frantz, C. M. Small, W. A. Cresko and N. D. Singh, G3-Genes Genomes Genetics, 2023.
Wolbachia is a maternally-transmitted endosymbiotic bacteria that infects a wide variety of arthropod and nematode hosts. The effects of Wolbachia on host biology are far-reaching and include changes in host gene expression. However, previous work on the host transcriptional ... |
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Next-generation CRISPR gene-drive systems using Cas12a nucleaseS. 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 ... |
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Next-generation CRISPR gene-drive systems using Cas12a nucleaseS. 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 ... |
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Genetic conversion of a split-drive into a full-drive elementG. Terradas, J. B. Bennett, Z. Li, J. M. Marshall and E. Bier, Nature Communications, 14:191. 2023.
The core components of CRISPR-based gene drives, Cas9 and guide RNA (gRNA), either can be linked within a self-contained single cassette (full gene-drive, fGD) or be provided in two separate elements (split gene-drive, sGD), the latter offering greater control options. We ... |
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Comparative Ubiquitome Analysis Reveals Deubiquitinating Effects Induced by Wolbachia Infection in Drosophila melanogasterQ. Zong, B. Mao, H. B. Zhang, B. Wang, W. J. Yu, Z. W. Wang and Y. F. Wang, International Journal Molecular Science, 23. 2022.
The endosymbiotic Wolbachia bacteria frequently cause cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) in their insect hosts, where Wolbachia-infected males cross with uninfected females, leading to no or fewer progenies, indicating a paternal modification by Wolbachia. Recent studies have ... |
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Temperature-Inducible Precision-Guided Sterile Insect TechniqueN. P. Kandul, J. R. Liu and O. S. Akbari, CRISPR Journal, 14. 2021.
Releases of sterile males are the gold standard for many insect population control programs, and precise sex sorting to remove females prior to male releases is essential to the success of these operations. To advance traditional methods for scaling the generation of sterile ... |
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Centromere function in asymmetric cell division in Drosophila female and male germline stem cellsA. M. Kochendoerfer, F. Modafferi and E. M. Dunleavy, Open Biology, 11:210107. 2021.
The centromere is the constricted chromosomal region required for the correct separation of the genetic material at cell division. The kinetochore protein complex assembles at the centromere and captures microtubules emanating from the centrosome to orchestrate chromosome ... |
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Sexual selection can partly explain low frequencies of Segregation Distorter allelesT. A. Keaney, T. M. Jones and L. Holman, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288:20211190. 2021.
The Segregation Distorter (SD) allele found in Drosophila melanogaster distorts Mendelian inheritance in heterozygous males by causing developmental failure of non-SD spermatids, such that greater than 90% of the surviving sperm carry SD. This within-individual advantage should ... |
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Wolbachia-Conferred Antiviral Protection Is Determined by Developmental TemperatureE. Chrostek, N. Martins, M. S. Marialva and L. Teixeira, mBio, e0292320. 2021.
Overall, we show that Wolbachia-conferred antiviral protection is temperature dependent, being present or absent depending on the environmental conditions. This interaction likely impacts Wolbachia-host interactions in nature and, as a result, frequencies of host and symbionts in ... |
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Diverse wMel variants of Wolbachia pipientis differentially rescue fertility and cytological defects of the bag of marbles partial loss of function mutation in Drosophila melanogasterJ. E. Bubnell, P. Fernandez-Begne, C. K. S. Ulbing and C. F. Aquadro, G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 2021.
In Drosophila melanogaster, the maternally inherited endosymbiont Wolbachia pipientis interacts with germline stem cell genes during oogenesis. One such gene, bag of marbles (bam) is the key switch for differentiation and also shows signals of adaptive evolution for protein ... |
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Red queen’s race: rapid evolutionary dynamics of an expanding family of meiotic drive factors and their hpRNA suppressorsJ. Vedanayagam, C.-J. Lin and E. C. Lai, bioRxiv, 2021.08.05.454923. 2021.
Meiotic drivers are a class of selfish genetic elements that are widespread across eukaryotes. Their activities are often detrimental to organismal fitness and thus trigger drive suppression to ensure fair segregation during meiosis. Accordingly, their existence is frequently ... |
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A homing suppression gene drive with multiplexed gRNAs maintains high drive conversion efficiency and avoids functional resistance allelesE. Yang, M. Metzloff, A. M. Langmüller, A. G. Clark, P. W. Messer and J. Champer, bioRxiv, 2021.05.27.446071. 2021.
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 ... |
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Inherently confinable split-drive systems in DrosophilaG. Terradas, A. B. Buchman, J. B. Bennett, I. Shriner, J. M. Marshall, O. S. Akbari and E. Bier, Nature Communications, 12:1480. 2021.
CRISPR-based gene-drive systems, which copy themselves via gene conversion mediated by the homology-directed repair (HDR) pathway, have the potential to revolutionize vector control. However, mutant alleles generated by the competing non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathway, ... |
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A confinable home and rescue gene drive for population modificationN. P. Kandul, J. Liu, J. B. Bennett, J. M. Marshall and O. S. Akbari, eLife, 10:e65939. 2021.
Homing based gene drives, engineered using CRISPR/Cas9, have been proposed to spread desirable genes throughout populations. However, invasion of such drives can be hindered by the accumulation of resistant alleles. To limit this obstacle, we engineer a confinable population ... |
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Edit, undo: Temporary gene editing could help solve the mosquito problemL. 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 ... |
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Engineering multiple species-like genetic incompatibilities in insectsM. Maselko, N. Feltman, A. Upadhyay, A. Hayward, S. Das, N. Myslicki, A. J. Peterson, M. B. O’Connor and M. J. Smanski, Nature Communications, 11:4468. 2020.
Here, we demonstrate a general approach to create engineered genetic incompatibilities (EGIs) in the model insect Drosophila melanogaster. |
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Inherently confinable split-drive systems in DrosophilaG. Terradas, A. B. Buchman, J. B. Bennett, I. Shriner, J. M. Marshall, O. S. Akbari and E. Bier, bioRxiv, 2020.09.03.282079. 2020.
Here, we test split gene-drive (sGD) systems in Drosophila melanogaster that were inserted into essential genes required for viability (rab5, rab11, prosalpha2) or fertility (spo11). I |
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Engineered Reproductively Isolated Species Drive Reversible Population ReplacementA. Buchman, I. Shriner, T. Yang, J. Liu, I. Antoshechkin, J. M. Marshall, M. W. Perry and O. S. Akbari, bioRxiv, 2020.08.09.242982. 2020.
Engineered reproductive species barriers are useful for impeding gene flow and driving desirable genes into wild populations in a reversible threshold-dependent manner. We engineer multiple reproductively isolated SPECIES and demonstrate their threshold-dependent gene drive ... |
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Chemical controllable gene drive in DrosophilaD. Chae, J. Lee, N. Lee, K. Park, S. J. Moon and H. H. Kim, ACS Synthetic Biology, in press. 2020.
Here, we report a chemical-induced control of gene drive. We prepared a CRISPR-based gene drive system that can be removed by a site-specific recombinase, Rippase, the expression of which is induced by the chemical RU486 in fruit flies. Exposure of fruit flies to RU486 resulted ... |
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Analysis of a Strong Suppressor of Segregation Distorter inDrosophila melanogasterR. G. Temin, Genetics, 215:1085-1105. 2020.
These studies highlight the polygenic nature of distortion and its dependence on a constellation of positive and negative modifiers, provide insight into the stability of Mendelian transmission in natural populations even when a drive system arises, and pave the way for molecular ... |
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A fly model establishes distinct mechanisms for synthetic CRISPR/Cas9 sex distortersB. Fasulo, A. Meccariello, M. Morgan, C. Borufka, P. A. Papathanos and N. Windbichler, PLOS Genetics, 16:e1008647. 2020.
Author summary Harmful insect populations can be eliminated for a lack of females if they are made to produce mostly male offspring. There are genes that occur naturally that make males produce mostly sons and, although we don’t know exactly how they work, this appears to ... |
