Keywords: toxin

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

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

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 ...
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A natural gene drive element confers speciation in rice

Y. Li, S. Liu and R. Shen,  Chinese Science Bulletin,  68:3400-3402. 2023.
For a long time, although many important advances have been made in the field of rice hybrid sterility, the specific molecular mechanism behind the "killer-protector"/ "poison-antidote" model has been unclear. Recently, the team of Academician Wan Jianmin of Nanjing Agricultural ...
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A natural gene drive system confers reproductive isolation in rice

C. Wang, J. Wang, J. Lu, Y. Xiong, Z. Zhao, X. Yu, X. Zheng, J. Li, Q. Lin, Y. Ren, Y. Hu, X. He, C. Li, Y. Zeng, R. Miao, M. Guo, B. Zhang, Y. Zhu, Y. Zhang, W. Tang, Y. Wang, B. Hao, Q. Wang, S. Cheng, X. He, B. Yao, J. Gao, X. Zhu, H. Yu, Y. Wang, Y. S,  Cell,  2023.
Hybrid sterility restricts the utilization of superior heterosis of indica-japonica inter-subspecific hybrids. In this study, we report the identification of RHS12, a major locus controlling male gamete sterility in indica-japonica hybrid rice. We show that RHS12 consists of two ...
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A toxin-antidote CRISPR gene drive system for regional population modification

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

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

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 ...
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How selfish genes succeed

Stowers Institute for Medical Research,  ScienceDaily,  2022.
A new study reveals how a selfish gene in yeast uses a poison-antidote strategy that enables its function and likely has facilitated its long-term evolutionary success. This strategy is an important addition for scientists studying similar systems including teams that are ...
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S. pombe wtf drivers use dual transcriptional regulation and selective protein exclusion from spores to cause meiotic drive

N. L. Nuckolls, A. Nidamangala Srinivasa, A. C. Mok, R. M. Helston, M. A. Bravo Núñez, J. J. Lange, T. J. Gallagher, C. W. Seidel and S. E. Zanders,  PLOS Genetics,  18:e1009847. 2022.
Author summary Genomes are often considered a collection of ‘good’ genes that provide beneficial functions for the organism. From this perspective, disease is thought to arise due to disfunction of ‘good’ genes. For example, infertility can be caused by the failure of a ...
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A Toxin-Antidote Selfish Element Increases Fitness of its Host

L. Long, W. Xu, A. B. Paaby and P. T. McGrath,  bioRxiv,  2022.07.15.500229. 2022.
Selfish genetic elements can promote their transmission at the expense of individual survival, creating conflict between the element and the rest of the genome. Recently, a large number of toxin-antidote (TA) post-segregation distorters have been identified in non-obligate ...
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Propagation of seminal toxins through binary expression gene drives could suppress populations

J. Hurtado, S. Revale and L. M. Matzkin,  Scientific Reports,  12:6332. 2022.
Gene drives can be highly effective in controlling a target population by disrupting a female fertility gene. To spread across a population, these drives require that disrupted alleles be largely recessive so as not to impose too high of a fitness penalty. We argue that this ...
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Propagation of seminal toxins through binary expression gene drives can suppress polyandrous populations

J. Hurtado, S. Revale and L. M. Matzkin,  bioRxiv,  2021.11.23.469777. 2021.
Gene drives can be highly effective in controlling a target population by disrupting a female fertility gene. To spread across a population, these drives require that disrupted alleles be largely recessive so as not to impose too high of a fitness penalty. We argue that this ...
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Design and analysis of CRISPR-based underdominance toxin-antidote gene drives

J. Champer, S. E. Champer, I. K. Kim, A. G. Clark and P. W. Messer,  Evolutionary Applications,  18. 2020.
We model drives which target essential genes that are either haplosufficient or haplolethal, using nuclease promoters with expression restricted to the germline, promoters that additionally result in cleavage activity in the early embryo from maternal deposition, and promoters ...
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The Biochemistry of Cytoplasmic Incompatibility Caused by Endosymbiotic Bacteria

H. Chen, M. Zhang and M. Hochstrasser,  Genes,  11. 2020.
Many species of arthropods carry maternally inherited bacterial endosymbionts that can influence host sexual reproduction to benefit the bacterium. The most well-known of such reproductive parasites is Wolbachia pipientis. Wolbachia are obligate intracellular ...
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