Pest controlCas-9-tratedGenetic engineering may help control disease-carrying mosquitoesEvery year, hundreds of millions of people catch mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever.Hundreds of thousands die. Drug treatments are imperfect. And, despite decades of effort, vaccines have, for many of these diseases, proved tricky to develop.Better, then, to stop those infections happening in the first place, by exterminating―or at least suppressing―the mosquitoes that carry the diseases.In a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers led by Craig Montell, of the University of California, Santa Barbara,describe how CRISPR-CAS9, a new and powerful genetic-engineering process, could help to do just that.Dr Montell and his colleagues used CRISPR to boost an existing control method called the sterile insect technique (SIT).This involves releasing lots of sterilised males into the wild. Females that mate with these males produce no offspring. Repeated releases can reduce populations dramatically.SIT has been used in North America to eliminate screwworm flies, an agricultural pest, and to suppress several species of crop-munching fruit flies.It has been tried on mosquitoes, too, but with less success. One reason seems to be side-effects of the procedure.
害虫防治CAS9阉割术基因工程有助于控制携带疾病的蚊子每年都有数以亿计的人感染疟疾和登革热等蚊媒疾病，成千上万的人因此而死亡。药物治疗并不完美，而且，尽管经过了几十年的努力，但许多此类疾病的疫苗还是难以研制。那么，最好从一开始就通过消灭――或者至少抑制――携带疾病的蚊子来阻止这些感染的发生。在刚刚发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上的一篇论文中，由加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的克雷格・蒙特尔领导的一组研究人员，描述了CRISPR-CAS9(一种新的强大的基因工程过程)是如何帮助实现这一目标的。蒙特尔博士和他的同事利用CRISPR技术来增强一种现有的控制方法――昆虫不育技术(SIT)。这项技术需要将很多绝育的雄性放生到野外，与这些雄性交配的雌性不会产下后代，反复进行放生则会大大减少其种群数量。SIT已在北美被用于消灭螺旋蝇(一种农业害虫)并抑制几种吃庄稼的果蝇。这项技术也曾在蚊子身上做过试验，但效果不太好。其中一个原因似乎是过程的副作用。
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