Publications

Background Wolbachia bacteria can be placed into insects and released into the wild, where the Wolbachia spreads throughout the insect population. They have been used as an effective disease control tool because the Wolbachia reduces transmission of pathogens by mosquitoes. It may also be possible to use the Wolbachia spread mechanism to power a gene drive, allowing for flexible deployment of cargo […]

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Background CRISPR/Cas9-based homing gene drives have emerged as a potential new approach to mosquito control. While attempts have been made to develop such systems in Aedes aegypti, none have been able to match the high drive efficiency observed in Anopheles species. Here we generate Ae. aegypti transgenic lines expressing Cas9 using germline-specific regulatory elements and assess their ability to […]

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Background The mosquito Aedes albopictus can transmit various arboviral diseases, posing a severe threat to human health. As an environmentally friendly method, sterile insect technology (SIT) is considered an alternative to traditional methods such as chemical pesticides to control Ae. albopictus. In SIT, the sterility of male mosquitoes can be achieved by γ-ray or X-ray radiation. Compared with […]

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Background Gene drive occurs when alleles of genes, multigene cassettes, or large chromosomal regions are transmitted to fertile progeny at greater-than-Mendelian frequencies (50%). Gene drive can be used to bring about population suppression or elimination when the rate at which the drive element increases in frequency outpaces a fitness cost induced by its presence, and […]

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Background The sterile insect technique (SIT) is emerging as a tool to supplement traditional pesticide-based control of Aedes aegypti, a prominent mosquito vector of microbes that has increased the global burden of human morbidity and mortality over the past 50 years. SIT relies on rearing, sterilizing and releasing large numbers of male mosquitoes that will mate with […]

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