Insecticides are vital in the global efforts to stop the spread of
mosquito-borne diseases as well as in controlling insect-driven crop
damage that impacts food security. However, many insects have adapted
and have developed resistance to the potency of insecticides.Climate
changeis also expected to aggravate these problems. Thus, TIGS
researchers applied the technique known as CRISPR-based allelic drive,
wherein an insecticide-resistant gene in fruit flies was replaced with
the normal insecticide-susceptible version. This is expected to
significantly lessen the amount of insecticide applications.

The study is a proof-of-principle and a similar system could be
developed for other insects, such as mosquitoes. The method can be used
with other strategies to enhance insecticide-based or parasite-reducing
measures to lessen the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.

Reversing insecticide resistance with allelic-drive in Drosophila
melanogaster | Nature Communications
[www.nature.com]