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Modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit Aedes aegypti populations

BACKGROUND: The discovery of CRISPR-based gene editing and its application to homing-based gene drive systems has been greeted with excitement, for its potential to control mosquito-borne diseases on a wide scale, and concern, for the invasiveness and potential irreversibility of a release. Gene dri...

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Autores principales: Sánchez C., Héctor M., Bennett, Jared B., Wu, Sean L., Rašić, Gordana, Akbari, Omar S., Marshall, John M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7218562/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32398005
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12915-020-0759-9
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author Sánchez C., Héctor M.
Bennett, Jared B.
Wu, Sean L.
Rašić, Gordana
Akbari, Omar S.
Marshall, John M.
author_facet Sánchez C., Héctor M.
Bennett, Jared B.
Wu, Sean L.
Rašić, Gordana
Akbari, Omar S.
Marshall, John M.
author_sort Sánchez C., Héctor M.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The discovery of CRISPR-based gene editing and its application to homing-based gene drive systems has been greeted with excitement, for its potential to control mosquito-borne diseases on a wide scale, and concern, for the invasiveness and potential irreversibility of a release. Gene drive systems that display threshold-dependent behavior could potentially be used during the trial phase of this technology, or when localized control is otherwise desired, as simple models predict them to spread into partially isolated populations in a confineable manner, and to be reversible through releases of wild-type organisms. Here, we model hypothetical releases of two recently engineered threshold-dependent gene drive systems—reciprocal chromosomal translocations and a form of toxin-antidote-based underdominance known as UD(MEL)—to explore their ability to be confined and remediated. RESULTS: We simulate releases of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito vector of dengue, Zika, and other arboviruses, in Yorkeys Knob, a suburb of Cairns, Australia, where previous biological control interventions have been undertaken on this species. We monitor spread to the neighboring suburb of Trinity Park to assess confinement. Results suggest that translocations could be introduced on a suburban scale, and remediated through releases of non-disease-transmitting male mosquitoes with release sizes on the scale of what has been previously implemented. UD(MEL) requires fewer releases to introduce, but more releases to remediate, including of females capable of disease transmission. Both systems are expected to be confineable to the release site; however, spillover of translocations into neighboring populations is less likely. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis supports the use of translocations as a threshold-dependent drive system capable of spreading disease-refractory genes into Ae. aegypti populations in a confineable and reversible manner. It also highlights increased release requirements when incorporating life history and population structure into models. As the technology nears implementation, further ecological work will be essential to enhance model predictions in preparation for field trials.
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spelling pubmed-72185622020-05-18 Modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit Aedes aegypti populations Sánchez C., Héctor M. Bennett, Jared B. Wu, Sean L. Rašić, Gordana Akbari, Omar S. Marshall, John M. BMC Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: The discovery of CRISPR-based gene editing and its application to homing-based gene drive systems has been greeted with excitement, for its potential to control mosquito-borne diseases on a wide scale, and concern, for the invasiveness and potential irreversibility of a release. Gene drive systems that display threshold-dependent behavior could potentially be used during the trial phase of this technology, or when localized control is otherwise desired, as simple models predict them to spread into partially isolated populations in a confineable manner, and to be reversible through releases of wild-type organisms. Here, we model hypothetical releases of two recently engineered threshold-dependent gene drive systems—reciprocal chromosomal translocations and a form of toxin-antidote-based underdominance known as UD(MEL)—to explore their ability to be confined and remediated. RESULTS: We simulate releases of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito vector of dengue, Zika, and other arboviruses, in Yorkeys Knob, a suburb of Cairns, Australia, where previous biological control interventions have been undertaken on this species. We monitor spread to the neighboring suburb of Trinity Park to assess confinement. Results suggest that translocations could be introduced on a suburban scale, and remediated through releases of non-disease-transmitting male mosquitoes with release sizes on the scale of what has been previously implemented. UD(MEL) requires fewer releases to introduce, but more releases to remediate, including of females capable of disease transmission. Both systems are expected to be confineable to the release site; however, spillover of translocations into neighboring populations is less likely. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis supports the use of translocations as a threshold-dependent drive system capable of spreading disease-refractory genes into Ae. aegypti populations in a confineable and reversible manner. It also highlights increased release requirements when incorporating life history and population structure into models. As the technology nears implementation, further ecological work will be essential to enhance model predictions in preparation for field trials. BioMed Central 2020-05-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7218562/ /pubmed/32398005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12915-020-0759-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2020 Open AccessThis 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 licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence 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 licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sánchez C., Héctor M.
Bennett, Jared B.
Wu, Sean L.
Rašić, Gordana
Akbari, Omar S.
Marshall, John M.
Modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit Aedes aegypti populations
title Modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit Aedes aegypti populations
title_full Modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit Aedes aegypti populations
title_fullStr Modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit Aedes aegypti populations
title_full_unstemmed Modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit Aedes aegypti populations
title_short Modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit Aedes aegypti populations
title_sort modeling confinement and reversibility of threshold-dependent gene drive systems in spatially-explicit aedes aegypti populations
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7218562/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32398005
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12915-020-0759-9
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