A new gene drive may push a species of malaria-carrying mosquito to extinction.
In a small-scale laboratory study, the genetic engineering tool caused Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes to stop producing offspring in eight to 12 generations, researchers report September 24 in Nature Biotechnology. If the finding holds up in larger studies, the gene drive could be the first capable of wiping out a disease-carrying mosquito species.
“This is a great day,” says James Bull, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the study. “Here we are with a technology that could radically change public health for the whole world.”
Gene drives use the molecular scissors known as CRISPR/Cas9 to copy and paste themselves into an organism’s DNA at precise locations. They’re designed to break the rules of inheritance, quickly spreading a genetic tweak to all offspring.