Genetically modified mosquitoes could combat deadly diseases, scientists say

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The Sydney Morning Herald,  2025.
Genetically modified mosquitoes could be the solution to stopping deadly diseases spread by mosquito bites, scientists say.

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.

Gene Drives: A Powerful and Controversial Genetic Technology

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Biomedical and Life Sciences Simplified,  YouTube,  2024.
Gene drives represent a powerful yet controversial genetic technique that challenges traditional Mendelian inheritance. By introducing self-propagating changes into an organism's genome, gene drives can ensure that a specific mutation becomes homozygous in offspring, effectively ...

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 ...

Djibouti Unleashes Controversial Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

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Palki Sharma,  Firstpost,  2024.
Djibouti is combatting malaria by employing a unique tactic: utilising mosquitoes to battle mosquitoes. The East African nation has released tens of thousands of genetically engineered mosquitoes armed with a "self-limiting" gene. This bioengineered gene aims to curb mosquito ...

How to Use Genetic Biocontrol to Manage Insect Pests

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Scientific Animations Without Borders,  YouTube,  2024.
Pest insects often transmit disease to humans and animals and destroy crops. Controlling these pests can improve human health and increase agricultural production. Pest insects are often controlled by releasing other insects into the environment that will specifically kill the ...

High-Stakes Decision Making for World-Changing Technologies

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TEDx Talks,  YouTube,  2024.
We have important decisions to make that require rigorous and inclusive decision-making models that can be applied on a broad scale to a growing number of emerging challenges.

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 ...

Mosquito Control releases over 100K sterile male mosquitos to combat Aedes aegypti population

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NBC2 News,  2024.
Mosquito Control releases over 100K sterile male mosquitos to combat Aedes aegypti population

“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 ...

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."

Scientists create first transgenic mosquito strain in Africa

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CGTN Africa,  2024.
Scientists in Tanzania have created the first transgenic mosquito strain in Africa. This genetically modified strain aims to prevent malaria transmission.

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.

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.

Regulation of gene drive technologies for malaria control & elimination

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Ifakara Health Institute,  2023.
The video talks about the importance of ensuring effective and thoughtful community and stakeholder engagement throughout research, development and deployment of gene drives for malaria control.

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 ...

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 ...

Inside the Plan to Release Life-Saving Mosquitoes

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WIRED,  2022.
The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District is turning towards a novel tool to combat harmful insecticide-resistant mosquitoes like the Aedes aegypti. What are they doing exactly? They're releasing millions of genetically modified male mosquitoes engineered to reduce the ...

In Real Life: GMOsquitoes

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Newsy,  2021.
The release of genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida gives hope of reducing the spread of disease while causing concerns among some citizens.

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?

Exploring Gene Drive Technologies in Agriculture, Biodiversity and Human Disease

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The GBIRd Partnership and The GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  Gene Drive Research Forum,  2021.
The GBIRd Partnership and The GeneConvene Global Collaborative recently collaborated through The Gene Drive Research Forum, to create and produce an engaging conversation between Drs. Fred Gould and Charles Godfray about gene drive technologies – the potential benefits and ...

ARRIGE 2020 Meeting | The promise of CRISPR and gene drive systems to end malaria in Africa

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E. Gomez-Diaz,  ARRIGE org,  2020.
Presentation by Elena Gómez Díaz (IPBLN-CSIC, Granada, Spain) at the ARRIGE 2020 meeting on "The promise of CRISPR and gene drive systems to end malaria in Africa". Discussion is included at the end of the Ruud de Maagd presentation.https://youtu.be/te3MJ8EZoes

Risks of releasing gene drives mosquitoes – a possible future scenario

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Testbiotech,  2020.
Genetically engineering the genome of an organism with gene drive means that it will be replicated in every following generation. This allows the altered gene to spread rapidly throughout natural populations, which may be decimated or even eradicated. The video contains both ...

How do you make a gene drive mosquito?

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GeneConvene Virtual Institute,  GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2020.
This short video explains and illustrates how transgenic mosquitoes are made in the laboratory.  While mosquitoes are the focus of the video, the process shown is used to create transgenic insects of almost any species.

Genetic Biocontrol – An Overview (video 13.13 min)

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GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2020.
This video explains what genetic biocontrol is and surveys various technologies that can be consider genetic biocontrol technologies.  It offers a conceptual organization of the various technologies based on the potential of genetic biocontrol organisms to persist and spread in ...

Gene Drive Basics – Characteristics and Properties

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GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2020.
This short video covers the concept of 'drive strength', 'drive thresholds', 'spreading', 'resistance' and describes two strategies by which transmission advantages can be achieved.  The video is intended to provide additional insights into the technology to enable and encourage ...

Underdominance

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GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2020.
This video graphically explains the genetic concept of underdominance and illustrates how it can result in one allele replacing another allele in a population.  While 'gene drive', underdominance is a genetic phenomenon that can be recreated using genetic technologies and might ...

Strategies for Achieving Gene Drive – Gonotaxis

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GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2020.
This video explains how there are three strategies for achieving gene drive and focuses on one, gonotaxis.  Gonotaxis is explained and illustrated.  While well-described in various plants and animals, gene drive researchers and technology developers have not recreated gonotaxis ...

Strategies for Achieving Gene Drive – Interference

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GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2020.
This short video explains how there are essentially three genetic strategies for achieve 'drive' or 'gene drive'.  This video focuses on the strategy of interference in which a genetic element achieves a transmission advantage or drives by disrupting the development of cells ...

Strategies for Achieving Gene Drive – Over-Replication

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GeneConvene Global Collaborative,  2020.
This short video explains how there are essentially three genetic strategies for achieve 'drive' or 'gene drive'.  This video focuses on Over-Replication, a very common strategy associated wtih different types of genetic elements found in nature that 'drive'.  This strategy is ...

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 ...

What are gene drives about?

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EFSAchannel,  2020.
EFSA expert Les Firbank, specialised in sustainable agriculture, talks about gene drives. Recent development in molecular biology are allowing scientists to engineer gene drives and use them to push desirable genes into target populations. How does that work? Learn more about ...

Gene Drive Film

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Save Our Seeds,  2020.
This is a video based on the findings in GENE DRIVES: A report on their science, applications, social aspects, ethics and regulations which you can find here.  There was a Symposium on May 24, 2019 that covers the topics in the report and the presentations at that symposium can ...

The bold plan to end malaria with a gene drive

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VOX,  2019.
How genetically engineered mosquitoes might defeat a disease that kills millions of children. This describes gene drive and features work from a group (Target Malaria) that is developing this technology for use against malaria

Gene Drive and Thinking Animals

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Island Conservation,  2019.
Royden Saah, Island Conservation's GBIRd program manager, recently spoke at the Thinking Animals Summit alongside Leilani Münter, a former professional race car driver and environmental activist. The Genetic Biocontrol of Invasive Rodents partnership (GBIRd) is designed for ...

Gene Drives and new genetic manipulation in agriculture

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Terra de Direitos,  2019.
Gene drives are forms of genetic editing or manipulation of live organisms. They are the most dangerous forms of transgenics which edit genetic characteristics without necessarily including a new gene, but rather manipulating existing genes of live organisms, i.e. live organism ...

Genetic control of Invasive carp

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MAISRC,  Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center,  2019.
This project focuses on a novel method of biocontrol for common carp which will complement existing technologies by introducing a synthetic species-like barrier to reproduction. Researchers will use programmable transcription activators to drive lethal embryonic overexpression of ...

Gene Drive Technologies: Powerful and destructive

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SWISSAID,  2019.
Gene drive organisms can put our environment, food and health in danger: this is made clear by the video from SWISSAID, the Alliance for GMO-free Switzerland and the ETC Group.

Gene Drives in Africa: Civil Society Speaks Out

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African Centre for Biodiversity,  2019.
On Monday 1st July 2019, Target Malaria announced the release of genetically modified (GM) sterile male mosquitoes in Bana, a village in Burkina Faso – the first GM insect to be released in Africa. This is Phase I – by Phase III, Target Malaria aims to release gene drive ...

Daisy-chain gene drives

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MIT Media Lab,  2019.
Who should decide whether, when, and how to alter the environment? These are hard questions, especially when the decisions will impact people in many different communities or nations. Daisy drive systems may help by empowering local communities to make decisions concerning their ...

A Question of Consent: Exterminator Mosquitoes in Burkina Faso

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ETC group,  2019.
Target Malaria’s planned release of GMO mosquitos is step toward release of gene drive mosquitoes, a high-risk technology aimed at the elimination of entire species. Hundreds of organizations have demanded a moratorium on the use of this technology outside of ...

Why I study the most dangerous animal on earth — mosquitoes | Fredros Okumu

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TED,  2018.
This is a TED talk by an African scientist who reflects on the impact of malaria on Africans and efforts to eliminate the diseases and the need for continued efforts.

Population Engineering | Gene Drive by CRISPR-CAS9

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SciToons,  2018.
The CRISPR-CAS9 genome editing technology is opening up previously inconceivable possibilities for the manipulation of organisms. Our ethical discussion appears to be far behind the pace of technological development. In this new SciToons video, we address how CRISPR-CAS9 can be ...

CRISPR Gene Drive (Complete guide 2019)

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Every Cell A Universe,  2018.
Crispr gene drive - malaria cure and a new way to look at conservation.

Gene drives could wipe out mosquitoes

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New Scientist,  2018.
This is a short video describing how gene drive is being considered for controlling malaria transmitting mosquitoes in Africa as part of ongoing malaria eradication efforts.

Ethics of sculpting evolution

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K. Esvelt,  PopTech,  2018.
How might supervillains take over the world, and what can we do about it? Kevin Esvelt, the first to identify the potential for CRISPR “gene drive” systems to alter entire populations of organisms, is calling for a new scientific method that is both open and gives ...

CRISPR Explained

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Mayo Clinic,  2018.
A short video that simply explains what CRISPR is and how it is used for gene editing. Simple language and highly accessible.

Gene Editing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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J. Oliver,  HBO,  2018.
Scientists are developing new ways to alter the genetic code of living organisms. John Oliver explores the risks, rewards, and wolf-related hazards of gene editing.

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.

Can We Engineer Social Ecosystems?

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Kevin Esvelt,  TEDxCambridgeSalon,  2018.
Kevin Esvelt is director of the Sculpting Evolution group, which invents new ways to study and influence the evolution of ecosystems. By carefully developing and testing these methods with openness and humility, the group seeks to address difficult ecological problems for the ...

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.

How selfish DNA hijacks its way into egg cells

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Science,  2017.
This video was produced by Science magazine and explains and illustrates how gonotaxis or the asymmetrical allocation of chromosomes to developing female gametes occurs in mice. This video reflects an understanding of this process based on the publication by Akera et al (2017).

A secret weapon against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases

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Nina Federoff,  TEDxMidAtlantic,  2017.
Where did Zika come from, and what can we do about it? Molecular biologist Nina Fedoroff takes us around the world to understand Zika's origins and how it spread, proposing a controversial way to stop the virus -- and other deadly diseases -- by preventing infected mosquitoes ...

CRISPR’s Gene Drive Could Revive Extinct Species–or Create New Ones | Jennifer Doudna

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Jennifer Doudna,  Big Think,  2017.
A leading gene editing scientist, Jennifer Doudna, discusses gene drive and their applications as well as de-extinction technologies.

Area-wide Integrated Pest Management

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Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),  International Atomic Energy Agency,  2017.
Throughout history, people have had to fight insect pests to reduce diseases, minimize food losses, protect agricultural trade or simply to avoid the nuisance of stinging, biting and buzzing bugs. Insect pest control is usually implemented locally in individual fields or ...

Gene drive for Malaria control | Andrea Crisanti |

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TEDx,  2017.
Andrea discusses his team's laboratory work that has developed a revolutionary technology to spread genetic modifications from few laboratory mosquitoes to wild populations to eradicate malaria in the near future

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?”

Gene Drives: Saving Lives Or Powering Extinctions?

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Fw:Thinking,  2016.
A few months back we talked about the revolutionary gene-editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 – a technology based on the bacterial immune system that will allow us to make edits to an organism’s genetic code with more ease and accuracy than ever before. CRISPR is changing ...

Openly Engineering Our Ecosystems

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TEDxCambridge,  2016.
Which technologies should we develop and how? Kevin Esvelt, leader of the Sculpting Evolution group and a professor at the MIT Media Lab, describes how CRISPR 'gene drives' can single-handedly alter entire wild populations and the critical importance of requiring powerful ...

Gene editing can now change an entire species — forever

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TED,  2016.
CRISPR gene drives allow scientists to change sequences of DNA and guarantee that the resulting edited genetic trait is inherited by future generations, opening up the possibility of altering entire species forever. More than anything, this technology has led to questions: How ...

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 ...

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.

CRISPR-Cas9: Safeguarding Gene Drives

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Harvard University,  2015.
In this animation, learn how effective safeguarding mechanisms developed at the Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School can be applied to ensure gene drive research is done responsibly in the laboratory. These safeguards enable responsible scientific investigation into how gene ...

The Sterile Insect Technique

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IAEA/FAO,  2015.
For over 50 years, the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) has been successfully used around the world to tackle pests that destroy fruit and kill livestock. The method uses radiation to sterilize male flies, which are mass-produced in rearing facilities. Large numbers of sterile ...