Engineering Pathogen Resistance in Mosquitoes
Chapter
Overview
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. The concept of pathogen-derived resistance is now 30 years old. While the technology for generating resistance phenotypes in crop plants has moved from experimental validation to field trials and ultimately to deregulation, progress in developing pathogen resistance phenotypes in mosquitoes has been slower and is still restricted to laboratory experiments. A number of different strategies have been used or are in development to generate mosquitoes unable to transmit malaria parasites or dengue viruses, the most common being immune activation and/or augmentation, host factor interference, and RNAi. While many strategies have reduced pathogen numbers in mosquitoes, only a few have generated complete resistance in the absence of significant fitness costs. Additional antipathogen strategies are sorely needed to provide a multi-pronged approach to reduce the potential for resistance breaking. Where successful antipathogen molecules have been developed, larger scale trials are needed along with evaluation against evolutionary diverse pathogens and varying environmental conditions to assess the robustness of resistance phenotypes. Here we summarize the strategies currently being pursued to generate pathogen-resistant mosquitoes, with particular emphasis on the methods used to evaluate the successful establishment of pathogen resistance.
