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Life

Evolution-defying DNA makes mosquitoes infertile by changing their sex

By Michael Le Page

24 September 2018

mosquitoes

Genetically edited to oblivion?

Susan Biddle/The Washington Post/Getty

Countless millions of lives might be saved, and the lives of hundreds of millions transformed for the better, by the first working gene drive. The gene drive completely wiped out all the mosquitoes in small cages in less than a dozen generations.

“There were no progeny, not a single one,” says Andrea Crisanti of Imperial College London, whose team’s gene drive is based on the CRISPR gene-editing method . “It goes to extinction.”

There are 200 million cases of malaria each year and half a million …

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