A male-biased sex-distorter gene drive for the human malaria vector Anopheles gambiae
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Only female insects transmit diseases such as malaria, dengue and Zika; therefore, control methods that bias the sex ratio of insect offspring have long been sought. Genetic elements such as sex-chromosome drives can distort sex ratios to produce unisex populations that eventually collapse, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are unknown. We report a male-biased sex-distorter gene drive (SDGD) in the human malaria vector Anopheles gambiae. We induced super-Mendelian inheritance of the X-chromosome-shredding I-PpoI nuclease by coupling this to a CRISPR-based gene drive inserted into a conserved sequence of the doublesex (dsx) gene. In modeling of invasion dynamics, SDGD was predicted to have a quicker impact on female mosquito populations than previously developed gene drives targeting female fertility. The SDGD at the dsx locus led to a male-only population from a 2.5% starting allelic frequency in 10-14 generations, with population collapse and no selection for resistance. Our results support the use of SDGD for malaria vector control.
Date Issued
2020-09-01
Date Acceptance
2020-04-01
Citation
Nature Biotechnology, 2020, 38, pp.1054-1060
ISSN
1087-0156
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
1054
End Page
1060
Journal / Book Title
Nature Biotechnology
Volume
38
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other
third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license,
unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in
the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other
third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license,
unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in
the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Sponsor
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32393821
PII: 10.1038/s41587-020-0508-1
Grant Number
OPP1141988
N/A
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology
POPULATION-GENETICS
MEIOTIC DRIVE
MOSQUITO
REQUIREMENTS
SYSTEMS
RATIO
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Date Publish Online
2020-05-11