A Synthetic Maternal-Effect Selfish Genetic Element Drives Population Replacement in <i>Drosophila</i>
Chun‐Hong Chen(California Institute of Technology), Haixia Huang(California Institute of Technology), Catherine M. Ward(California Institute of Technology), Jessica T. Su(California Institute of Technology), Lorian Schaeffer(California Institute of Technology), Ming Guo(California Institute of Technology), Bruce A. Hay(California Institute of Technology)
Cited by 337
Abstract
One proposed strategy for controlling the transmission of insect-borne pathogens uses a drive mechanism to ensure the rapid spread of transgenes conferring disease refractoriness throughout wild populations. Here, we report the creation of maternal-effect selfish genetic elements in Drosophila that drive population replacement and are resistant to recombination-mediated dissociation of drive and disease refractoriness functions. These selfish elements use microRNA-mediated silencing of a maternally expressed gene essential for embryogenesis, which is coupled with early zygotic expression of a rescuing transgene.
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