Year: 2022
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: The global incidence of malaria has been reduced in the past 15 years and much of this success results from the application of vector control methods to prevent pathogen transmission (Bhatt et al., 2015).However, the decline in incidence has slowed recently, and disease incidence and prevalence remain high (World Health Organization, 2020).Traditional vector control methods, although effective in many regional and local applications, are limited in others and may be complemented by new synthetic biological tools.Transgenic and/or genome-edited mosquitoes can carry special traits for spread into wild populations that are expected to assist in local elimination and contribute ultimately to disease eradication (Carballar-Lejarazú and James, 2017).These traits can be designed to reduce the ability of vector mosquitoes to sustain parasite transmission, or to decrease their lifespan or ability to reproduce, known respectively as population alteration/modification/replacement (henceforth referred to as 'population modification') and population suppression.The prospect of driving genetic modifications that confer malaria parasite refractory or resistance qualities into mosquito vectors has been captivating scientists for more than 50 years (Curtis, 1968).Naturally-occurring 'selfish' genetic elements were proposed as a way to achieve geneticallyengineered populations (Curtis, 1992;Burt, 2003).However, the major technological breakthrough in the field came only recently with the discovery of CRISPR/Cas9-based gene-editing approaches, which offer simplicity and efficiency when compared to other genome-editing tools (Ran et al., 2013).Since then, studies of vector-pathogen biology and malaria immunology combined with the development of molecular tools for manipulating mosquito genomes have been fueling new developments, including mosquitoes that express exogenous or endogenous anti-parasite effectors, or lack important host factors that affect Plasmodium transmission (Sreenivasamurthy et al., 2013;Carballar-Lejarazú and James, 2017;Simões, Caragata and Dimopoulos, 2018).We discuss here the application of some of these studies and how vector manipulation tools such as those derived from CRISPR/Cas9-based gene-drive technologies can be used to modify anopheline
Source: CABI eBooks
Authors: Vanessa Bottino-Rojas, Anthony A. James
Institution: University of California, Irvine
Language: English
Topic: Malaria Research and Control
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4308104141