Wissenschaftler entwickeln ein neues Gene-Drive-System, das insektizidresistente Formen mutierter Insektengene zurück in ihre natürliche, native Form umwandelt und dann verschwindet. In Laborexperimenten wurden alle Nachkommen in acht bis zehn Generationen in native Gene umgewandelt, was bei Fliegen etwa sechs Monate dauerte.

I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

A self-eliminating allelic-drive reverses insecticide resistance in Drosophila leaving no transgene in the population

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54210-4

Abstract

Insecticide resistance (IR) poses a significant global challenge to public health and welfare. Here, we develop a locally-acting unitary self-eliminating allelic-drive system, inserted into the Drosophila melanogaster yellow (y) locus. The drive cassette encodes both Cas9 and a single gRNA to bias inheritance of the favored wild-type (1014 L) allele over the IR (1014 F) variant of the voltage-gated sodium ion channel (vgsc) target locus. When enduring a fitness cost, this transiently-acting drive can increase the frequency of the wild-type allele to 100%, depending on its seeding ratio, before being eliminated from the population. However, in a fitness-neutral “hover” mode, the drive maintains a constant frequency in the population, completely converting IR alleles to wild-type, even at low initial seeding ratios.

From the linked article:

New Gene Drive Reverses Insecticide Resistance in Pests… Then Disappears

The self-eliminating ‘e-Drive’ replaces mutant genes with native genes to reduce pesticide use and protect valuable food crops

Insecticides have been used for centuries to counteract widespread pest damage to valuable food crops. Eventually, over time, beetles, moths, flies and other insects develop genetic mutations that render the insecticide chemicals ineffective.

University of California San Diego geneticists have now developed a solution to this concern. Publishing in the journal Nature Communications, School of Biological Sciences Postdoctoral Scholar Ankush Auradkar and Professor Ethan Bier led the creation of a new genetic system that converts insecticide-resistant forms of mutated insect genes back to their natural, native form. The novel system is designed to spread the original “wild type” version of the gene using the biased inheritance of specific genetic variants known as alleles and then disappear, leaving only a population of insects with the corrected version of the gene.

In laboratory experiments all of the offspring were converted to native genes in eight-to-10 generations, which took about six months in flies.

“Because insects carrying the gene cassette are penalized with a severe fitness cost, the element is rapidly eliminated from the population, lasting only as long as it takes to convert 100 percent of the insecticide-resistant forms of the target gene back to wild-type,” said Auradkar.