Driving down malaria transmission with engineered gene drives
File(s)
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The last century has witnessed the introduction, establishment and expansion of mosquito-borne diseases into diverse new geographic ranges. Malaria is transmitted by female Anopheles mosquitoes. Despite making great strides over the past few decades in reducing the burden of malaria, transmission is now on the rise again, in part owing to the emergence of mosquito resistance to insecticides, antimalarial drug resistance and, more recently, the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the reduced implementation efficiency of various control programs. The utility of genetically engineered gene drive mosquitoes as tools to decrease the burden of malaria by controlling the disease-transmitting mosquitoes is being evaluated. To date, there has been remarkable progress in the development of CRISPR/Cas9-based homing endonuclease designs in malaria mosquitoes due to successful proof-of-principle and multigenerational experiments. In this review, we examine the lessons learnt from the development of current CRISPR/Cas9-based homing endonuclease gene drives, providing a framework for the development of gene drive systems for the targeted control of wild malaria-transmitting mosquito populations that overcome challenges such as with evolving drive-resistance. We also discuss the additional substantial works required to progress the development of gene drive systems from scientific discovery to further study and subsequent field application in endemic settings.
Date Issued
2022-10-19
Date Acceptance
2022-09-13
Citation
FRONTIERS IN GENETICS, 2022, 13, pp.1-17
Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
Start Page
1
End Page
17
Journal / Book Title
FRONTIERS IN GENETICS
Volume
13
Copyright Statement
© 2022 Garrood, Cuber, Willis, Bernardini, Page and Haghighat-Khah. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
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Identifier
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000880103500001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Genetics & Heredity
gene drive
homing
malaria
disease control
CRiSPR
Cas
mosquitoes
MOSQUITOS TRANSFER GENES
ANOPHELES-GAMBIAE
TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENT
TRANSGENIC MOSQUITOS
SEX-DETERMINATION
BLOOD MEAL
DROSOPHILA
FITNESS
ENDONUCLEASE
SYSTEM
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 891218
Date Publish Online
2022-10-19