RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Synthetically Engineered <em>Medea</em> Gene Drive System in the Worldwide Crop Pest, <em>D. suzukii</em>
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 162255
DO 10.1101/162255
A1 Anna Buchman
A1 John M. Marshall
A1 Dennis Ostrovski
A1 Ting Yang
A1 Omar S. Akbari
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/11/162255.abstract
AB Synthetic gene drive systems possess enormous potential to replace, alter, or suppress wild populations of significant disease vectors and crop pests; however, their utility in diverse populations remains to be demonstrated. Here, we report the creation of the first-ever synthetic Medea gene drive element in a major worldwide crop pest, D. suzukii. We demonstrate that this drive element, based on an engineered maternal “toxin” coupled with a linked embryonic “antidote,” is capable of biasing Mendelian inheritance rates with up to 100% efficiency. However, we find that drive resistance, resulting from naturally occurring genetic variation and associated fitness costs, can hinder the spread of such an element. Despite this, our results suggest that this element could maintain itself at high frequencies in a wild population, and spread to fixation, if either its fitness costs or toxin resistance were reduced, providing a clear path forward for developing future such systems.