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25 Sep 2018, 10:59 pm
Quote:
Malaria is among the world’s worst scourges. In 2016 the disease, which is caused by a parasite and transmitted by mosquitoes, infected 194 million people in Africa and caused 445,000 deaths...
A team led by Andrea Crisanti, a biologist at Imperial College, London, altered a gene that disrupts the mosquito’s sexual development; the females become infertile but the males remain able to spread the debilitating gene to an ever-dwindling number of progeny. Dr. Crisanti found that laboratory populations of mosquitoes can be driven to extinction within 11 generations, he and colleagues report in Monday’s issue of Nature Biotechnology. Wild populations could be made to crash in about four years, according to computer models...
Dr. Crisanti’s team disrupted the doublesex gene in a way that affects only females. These females develop ambiguous sexual features: they cannot bite because they have male-type mouthparts, and they are infertile. But the males are unaffected and continue spreading the disruptive gene until no more eggs are laid...
Kevin Esvelt, who studies the evolution of gene drives at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicated that the biological aspects of mosquito control may now be close to solution. “With this achievement, the major barriers to saving lives are arguably no longer mostly technical, but social and diplomatic,” he said...
Implementing such a program would entail releasing just a few hundred drive-carrying mosquitoes in each village. “We wouldn’t have to hit every village, maybe as few as one percent,” Dr. Burt said. Complete eradication isn’t necessary; the malaria parasite can’t maintain its populations once the number of mosquitoes falls below a certain number.
“If there are no unexpected technical or regulatory delays,” Dr. Burt said, “it’s possible to envisage that gene-drive mosquitoes, in combination with other approaches, could have eliminated malaria in significant parts of Africa in 15 years.”
A team led by Andrea Crisanti, a biologist at Imperial College, London, altered a gene that disrupts the mosquito’s sexual development; the females become infertile but the males remain able to spread the debilitating gene to an ever-dwindling number of progeny. Dr. Crisanti found that laboratory populations of mosquitoes can be driven to extinction within 11 generations, he and colleagues report in Monday’s issue of Nature Biotechnology. Wild populations could be made to crash in about four years, according to computer models...
Dr. Crisanti’s team disrupted the doublesex gene in a way that affects only females. These females develop ambiguous sexual features: they cannot bite because they have male-type mouthparts, and they are infertile. But the males are unaffected and continue spreading the disruptive gene until no more eggs are laid...
Kevin Esvelt, who studies the evolution of gene drives at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicated that the biological aspects of mosquito control may now be close to solution. “With this achievement, the major barriers to saving lives are arguably no longer mostly technical, but social and diplomatic,” he said...
Implementing such a program would entail releasing just a few hundred drive-carrying mosquitoes in each village. “We wouldn’t have to hit every village, maybe as few as one percent,” Dr. Burt said. Complete eradication isn’t necessary; the malaria parasite can’t maintain its populations once the number of mosquitoes falls below a certain number.
“If there are no unexpected technical or regulatory delays,” Dr. Burt said, “it’s possible to envisage that gene-drive mosquitoes, in combination with other approaches, could have eliminated malaria in significant parts of Africa in 15 years.”
A false-color scanning electron micrograph of an Anopheles gambiae mosquito. By using a method called a gene drive, researchers believe they can eliminate a population of disease-carrying mosquitoes within a dozen generations. Credit Dr. Tony Brain/Science Source
26 Sep 2018, 5:31 pm
