Global Governing Bodies: A Pathway for Gene Drive Governance for Vector Mosquito Control.

Gene drive technologies represent powerful tools to develop vector control strategies that will complement the current approaches to mitigate arthropod-borne infectious diseases. The characteristics of gene drive technologies have raised additional concerns to those for standard genetically engineered organisms. This generates a need for adaptive governance that has not been met yet because of the rapid rate of progress in gene drive research.

Experimental population modification of the malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles stephensi.

Small laboratory cage trials of non-drive and gene-drive strains of the Asian malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles stephensi, were used to investigate release ratios and other strain properties for their impact on transgene spread during simulated population modification. We evaluated the effects of transgenes on survival, male contributions to next-generation populations, female reproductive success and the impact of accumulation of gene drive-resistant genomic target sites resulting from nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) mutagenesis during Cas9, guide RNA-mediated cleavage. Experiments with a non-drive, autosomally-linked malaria-resistance gene cassette showed 'full introduction' (100% of the insects have at least one copy of the transgene) within 8 weeks (≤ 3 generations) following weekly releases of 10:1 transgenic:wild-type males in an overlapping generation trial design.