Engineered reproductively isolated species drive reversible population replacement.
Anna Buchman, Isaiah Shriner, Ting Yang, Junru Liu, Igor Antoshechkin, John M Marshall, Michael W Perry, Omar S Akbari
Nature communications · 2021-Jun-02 · PMID 34078888 · DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-23531-zAbstract
Engineered reproductive species barriers are useful for impeding gene flow and driving desirable genes into wild populations in a reversible threshold-dependent manner. However, methods to generate synthetic barriers are lacking in advanced eukaryotes. Here, to overcome this challenge, we engineer SPECIES (Synthetic Postzygotic barriers Exploiting CRISPR-based Incompatibilities for Engineering Species), an engineered genetic incompatibility approach, to generate postzygotic reproductive barriers. Using this approach, we create multiple reproductively isolated SPECIES and demonstrate their reproductive isolation and threshold-dependent gene drive capabilities in D. melanogaster. Given the near-universal functionality of CRISPR tools, this approach should be portable to many species, including insect disease vectors in which confinable gene drives could be of great practical utility.
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- laboratory
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- published
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- Conflict statement
- O.S.A. and A.B. have a patent pending on this technology. Patent applicant—University of California, UCSD. Name of inventor(s)—A.B. and O.S.A. Application number—Invention 2020-184. Status of application—Pending. Specific aspect of manuscript covered in patent application—Using multiplexed dCas9/Cas9/gRNA combinations to generate reproductive isolation that can be used for population control. O.S.A. is co-founder and serves on the scientific advisory board of Agragene. All other authors declare no significant competing financial, professional, or personal interests that might have influenced the performance or presentation of the work described.