Engineering multiple species-like genetic incompatibilities in insects

Maciej Maselko, Nathan Feltman, Ambuj Upadhyay, Amanda Hayward, Siba Das, Nathan Myslicki, Aidan J. Peterson, Michael B. O’Connor and Michael J. Smanski ()
Additional contact information
Maciej Maselko: University of Minnesota
Nathan Feltman: University of Minnesota
Ambuj Upadhyay: University of Minnesota
Amanda Hayward: University of Minnesota
Siba Das: University of Minnesota
Nathan Myslicki: University of Minnesota
Aidan J. Peterson: University of Minnesota
Michael B. O’Connor: University of Minnesota
Michael J. Smanski: University of Minnesota

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Speciation constrains the flow of genetic information between populations of sexually reproducing organisms. Gaining control over mechanisms of speciation would enable new strategies to manage wild populations of disease vectors, agricultural pests, and invasive species. Additionally, such control would provide safe biocontainment of transgenes and gene drives. Here, we demonstrate a general approach to create engineered genetic incompatibilities (EGIs) in the model insect Drosophila melanogaster. EGI couples a dominant lethal transgene with a recessive resistance allele. Strains homozygous for both elements are fertile and fecund when they mate with similarly engineered strains, but incompatible with wild-type strains that lack resistant alleles. EGI genotypes can also be tuned to cause hybrid lethality at different developmental life-stages. Further, we demonstrate that multiple orthogonal EGI strains of D. melanogaster can be engineered to be mutually incompatible with wild-type and with each other. EGI is a simple and robust approach in multiple sexually reproducing organisms.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18348-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-18348-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18348-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().