Marshall John M
Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA.
Bioeng Bugs. 2011 Sep-Oct;2(5):235-40. doi: 10.4161/bbug.2.5.15801. Epub 2011 Sep 1.
Insects carry out essential ecological functions, such as pollination, but also cause extensive damage to agricultural crops, and transmit human diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Advances in insect transgenesis are making it increasingly feasible to engineer genes conferring desirable phenotypes, and gene drive systems are required to spread these genes into wild populations. Medea provides one solution, being able to spread into a population from very low initial frequencies through the action of a maternally-expressed toxin linked to a zygotically-expressed antidote. Several other toxin-antidote combinations are imaginable that distort the offspring ratio in favor of a desired transgene, or drive the population towards an all-male crash. We explore two such systems--Semele, which is capable of spreading a desired transgene into an isolated population in a confined manner; and Merea, which is capable of inducing a local population crash when located on the Z chromosome of a Lepidopteron pest.
昆虫执行着重要的生态功能，比如授粉，但也会对农作物造成广泛损害，还会传播疟疾和登革热等人类疾病。昆虫转基因技术的进展使得设计赋予理想表型的基因变得越来越可行，并且需要基因驱动系统将这些基因传播到野生种群中。美狄亚基因提供了一种解决方案，它能够通过与合子表达的解毒剂相联系的母系表达毒素的作用，从非常低的初始频率传播到一个种群中。还可以设想其他几种毒素 - 解毒剂组合，它们会使后代比例偏向于所需的转基因，或者驱使种群走向全雄崩溃。我们探索了两种这样的系统——塞墨勒系统，它能够以受限的方式将所需的转基因传播到一个隔离的种群中；以及墨瑞阿系统，当位于鳞翅目害虫的Z染色体上时，它能够引发当地种群崩溃。
