Differentially spliced mitochondrial CYP419A1 contributes to ethiprole resistance in Nilaparvata lugens.

The brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens is one of the most economically important pests of cultivated rice in Southeast Asia. Extensive use of insecticide treatments, such as imidacloprid, fipronil and ethiprole, has resulted in the emergence of multiple resistant strains of N. lugens.

Driving down malaria transmission with engineered gene drives.

The last century has witnessed the introduction, establishment and expansion of mosquito-borne diseases into diverse new geographic ranges. Malaria is transmitted by female mosquitoes. Despite making great strides over the past few decades in reducing the burden of malaria, transmission is now on the rise again, in part owing to the emergence of mosquito resistance to insecticides, antimalarial drug resistance and, more recently, the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the reduced implementation efficiency of various control programs.

P450 gene duplication and divergence led to the evolution of dual novel functions and insecticide cross-resistance in the brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens.

The sustainable control of many highly damaging insect crop pests and disease vectors is threatened by the evolution of insecticide resistance. As a consequence, strategies have been developed that aim to prevent or delay resistance development by rotating or mixing insecticides with different modes of action (MoA). However, these approaches can be compromised by the emergence of mechanisms that confer cross-resistance to insecticides with different MoA.

Resistance to a CRISPR-based gene drive at an evolutionarily conserved site is revealed by mimicking genotype fixation.

CRISPR-based homing gene drives can be designed to disrupt essential genes whilst biasing their own inheritance, leading to suppression of mosquito populations in the laboratory. This class of gene drives relies on CRISPR-Cas9 cleavage of a target sequence and copying ('homing') therein of the gene drive element from the homologous chromosome. However, target site mutations that are resistant to cleavage yet maintain the function of the essential gene are expected to be strongly selected for.

Analysis of off-target effects in CRISPR-based gene drives in the human malaria mosquito.

CRISPR-Cas9 nuclease-based gene drives have been developed toward the aim of control of the human malaria vector Gene drives are based on an active source of Cas9 nuclease in the germline that promotes super-Mendelian inheritance of the transgene by homology-directed repair ("homing"). Understanding whether CRISPR-induced off-target mutations are generated in mosquitoes is an important aspect of risk assessment before any potential field release of this technology. We compared the frequencies and the propensity of off-target events to occur in four different gene-drive strains, including a deliberately promiscuous set-up, using a nongermline restricted promoter for SpCas9 and a guide RNA with many closely related sites (two or more mismatches) across the mosquito genome.