Journal article
Successful establishment of Wolbachia in Aedes populations to suppress dengue transmission
AA Hoffmann, BL Montgomery, J Popovici, I Iturbe-Ormaetxe, PH Johnson, F Muzzi, M Greenfield, M Durkan, YS Leong, Y Dong, H Cook, J Axford, AG Callahan, N Kenny, C Omodei, EA McGraw, PA Ryan, SA Ritchie, M Turelli, SL O'Neill
Nature | Published : 2011
DOI: 10.1038/nature10356
Abstract
Genetic manipulations of insect populations for pest control have been advocated for some time, but there are few cases where manipulated individuals have been released in the field and no cases where they have successfully invaded target populations. Population transformation using the intracellular bacterium Wolbachia is particularly attractive because this maternally-inherited agent provides a powerful mechanism to invade natural populations through cytoplasmic incompatibility. When Wolbachia are introduced into mosquitoes, they interfere with pathogen transmission and influence key life history traits such as lifespan. Here we describe how the wMel Wolbachia infection, introduced into th..
View full abstractGrants
Funding Acknowledgements
We are grateful to J. Sutton, C. Paton, G. Omodei, S. Long, A. Gofton, V. White, A. Weeks, A. James, J. Dick, R. Bagita, P. Gibson, J. Jeffery, E. Rances, D. Rossi and J. Gough for technical and mapping support. We thank B. Kay for ongoing advice. We acknowledge and thank both D. McNaughton and D. Eastop for the early community engagement work preceding the trial. We thank all of our volunteers who helped blood-feed the mosquito colonies and we are particularly grateful to the residents of Gordonvale and Yorkeys Knob for their strong support and participation. This research was supported by a grant from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health through the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia, the National and International Research Alliances Program of the Queensland Government, the RAPIDD program of the NIH, the Climate Health Cluster of the CSIRO Flagship Collaboration Fund, the National Science Foundation and Fellowships from the Australian Research Council.