Population suppression with dominant female-lethal alleles is boosted by homing gene drive.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Methods to suppress pest insect populations using genetic constructs and repeated releases of male homozygotes have recently been shown to be an attractive alternative to older sterile insect techniques based on radiation. Female-specific lethal alleles have substantially increased power, but still require large, sustained transgenic insect releases. Gene drive alleles bias their own inheritance to spread throughout populations, potentially allowing population suppression with a single, small-size release. However, suppression drives often suffer from efficiency issues, and the most well-studied type, homing drives, tend to spread without limit.

Results

In this study, we show that coupling female-specific lethal alleles with homing gene drive allowed substantial i

SUBMITTER: Zhu J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11389273 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature