Gene drives are selfish genetic elements that can be re-designed to invade a population and they hold tremendous potential for the control of mosquitoes that transmit disease. Much progress has been made recently in demonstrating proof of principle for gene drives able to suppress populations of malarial mosquitoes, or to make them refractory to the Plasmodium parasites they transmit. This has been achieved using CRISPR-based gene drives. In this article, I will discuss the relative merits of this type of gene drive, as well as barriers to its technical development and to its deployment in the field as malaria control.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Novel control strategies for mosquito-borne diseases'.

基因驱动是自私的遗传元素，可以重新设计以入侵种群，它们在控制传播疾病的蚊子方面具有巨大的潜力。最近在证明基因驱动的原理证明方面取得了很大进展，该基因驱动能够抑制疟蚊种群，或者使它们对它们传播的疟原虫寄生虫产生抵抗力。这是通过基于 CRISPR 的基因驱动实现的。在本文中，我将讨论这种基因驱动的相对优点，以及其技术开发及其在疟疾控制领域的部署的障碍。

本文是主题“蚊媒疾病的新型控制策略”的一部分。