Gene Drive and Symbiont Technologies for Control of Mosquito-Borne Diseases

Mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue and malaria, pose a significant burden to global health. Current control strategies with insecticides are only moderately effective. Scalable solutions are needed to reduce the transmission risk of these diseases. Symbionts and genome engineering–based mosquito control strategies have been proposed to address these problems. Bacterial, fungal, and viral symbionts affect mosquito reproduction, reduce mosquito lifespan, and block pathogen transmission. Field tests of endosymbiont Wolbachia-based methods have yielded promising results, but there are hurdles to overcome due to the large-scale rearing and accurate sex sorting required for Wolbachia-based suppression approaches and the ecological impediments to Wolbachia invasion in replacement approaches. Genome engineering–based methods, in which mosquitoes are genetically altered for the modification or suppression of wild populations, offer an additional approach for control of mosquito-borne diseases. In particular, the use of gene drive alleles that bias inheritance in their favor is a potentially powerful approach. Several drives are frequency dependent, potentially giving them broadly similar population dynamics to Wolbachia. However, public acceptance and the behavior of released drives in natural mosquito populations remain challenges. We summarize the latest developments and discuss the knowledge gaps in both symbiont- and gene drive–based methods.