Engineering species-like barriers to sexual reproduction.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29026112.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-01007-3 and PMC identifier 5638955.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Controlling the exchange of genetic information between sexually reproducing populations has applications in agriculture, eradication of disease vectors, control of invasive species, and the safe study of emerging biotechnology applications. Here we introduce an approach to engineer a genetic barrier to sexual reproduction between otherwise compatible populations. Programmable transcription factors drive lethal gene expression in hybrid offspring following undesired mating events. As a proof of concept, we target the ACT1 promoter of the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae using a dCas9-based transcriptional activator. Lethal overexpression of actin results from mating this engineered strain with a strain containing the wild-type ACT1 promoter.Genetic isolation of a genetically modified organism represents a useful strategy for biocontainment. Here the authors use dCas9-VP64-driven gene expression to construct a 'species-like' barrier to reproduction between two otherwise compatible populations.
Medical subject headings
- Actins
- Genetic Engineering
- Reproductive Isolation
- Saccharomyces cerevisiae
- Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins