Engineering species-like barriers to sexual reproduction

Maciej Maselko; Stephen C. Heinsch; Jeremy M. Chacón; William R. Harcombe; Michael J. Smanski

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01007-3

Engineering species-like barriers to sexual reproduction

Maciej Maselko, Stephen C. Heinsch, Jeremy M. Chacón, William R. Harcombe, Michael J. Smanski^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

34 Citations (Scopus)

117 Downloads (Pure)

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.

Original language	English
Article number	883
Pages (from-to)	1-7
Number of pages	7
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	8
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01007-3
Publication status	Published - 12 Oct 2017
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Author(s) 2017. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

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Engineering species-like barriers to sexual reproduction

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