Researcher Wang Guanhong published a review article on the prevention and control of mosquito-borne diseases by symbiotic bacteria and gene drive technology in Trends in Genetics

Wang Guanhong, a researcher from the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Jackson Champer, a researcher from the School of Life Sciences, Peking University, published a review article entitled "Symbionts and gene drive: two strategies to combat vector-borne disease" in the internationally renowned journal Trends in Genetics, systematically summarizing the symbiosis The latest research progress of bacteria and gene drive technology in the prevention and control of mosquito-borne diseases

Mosquitoes are important vectors of human infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, posing a serious threat to global health and life security

1.

Mosquito control effect based on natural symbiotic bacteria and engineered bacteria, such as Wolbachia is the most widely studied mosquito control system based on natural symbiotic bacteria .

The prevention and control of mosquito-borne diseases based on symbiotic bacteria mainly includes the following aspects: (1) Bacteria-based mosquito control technology: Male mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia achieve the effect of mosquito population suppression through CI effect or by changing the mosquito population to resistance to pathogens

2.

In recent years, with the advent of CRISPR technology, gene drive research has made great progress

(1) Unrestricted gene drive

Homing drives encode endonucleases that cleave target sites in homologous chromosomes and replicate themselves during homology-directed repair

　　Several homing drivers with specific modification functions have been developed

　　To overcome this problem, a rescue homing driver was engineered in Drosophila to target haploid lethal genes

　　Homing drives can suppress populations by design targeting essential but haplo-sufficient genes (without rescue)

　　(2) Restricted gene drive

　　Restrictive gene drives have an introduction threshold, and the drive frequency needs to be above the threshold to increase and reach equilibrium, and below the threshold to decrease and be eliminated

　　Unrestricted homing drives may not be suitable for some specific situations, such as local suppression of invasive species

　　(3) Self-limiting gene drive

　　The killer-rescue drive is a classic "self-limiting" drive system consisting of two independent alleles

　　Other self-limiting drive systems include a separate drive element and a support element

　　3.

　　In recent years, with the influence of factors such as urbanization, global trade, and climate warming, mosquitoes have spread across regions, and the lack of efficient mosquito control methods has made the prevention and control of insect-borne diseases more difficult.
It is easy to cause drug resistance while having a certain control effect.
Therefore, symbiotic bacteria and gene drive methods, as two new control strategies, have strong application potential in mosquito control
.

　　The research was supported by projects such as the Class B Pilot Special Cultivation Project (XDPB16) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
.

　　Paper link: https:// align="center">

Figure 1.
Mosquito control method based on symbiotic bacteria

Figure 2 Limitations of gene drives

Figure 3 Action mode diagram of homing drive