@article{60aff4711eb14ca09f930d7fc2a74772,
title = "Successful establishment of Wolbachia in Aedes populations to suppress dengue transmission",
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 the dengue vector Aedes aegypti from Drosophila melanogaster, successfully invaded two natural A. aegypti populations in Australia, reaching near-fixation in a few months following releases of wMel-infected A. aegypti adults. Models with plausible parameter values indicate that Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes suffered relatively small fitness costs, leading to an unstable equilibrium frequency <30% that must be exceeded for invasion. These findings demonstrate that Wolbachia-based strategies can be deployed as a practical approach to dengue suppression with potential for area-wide implementation.",
author = "Hoffmann, {A. A.} and Montgomery, {B. L.} and J. Popovici and I. Iturbe-Ormaetxe and Johnson, {P. H.} and F. Muzzi and M. Greenfield and M. Durkan and Leong, {Y. S.} and Y. Dong and H. Cook and J. Axford and Callahan, {A. G.} and N. Kenny and C. Omodei and McGraw, {E. A.} and Ryan, {P. A.} and Ritchie, {S. A.} and M. Turelli and O'Neill, {S. L.}",
note = "Funding Information: AcknowledgementsWeare gratefultoJ.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.",
year = "2011",
month = aug,
day = "25",
doi = "10.1038/nature10356",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "476",
pages = "454--459",
journal = "Nature",
issn = "0028-0836",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "7361",
}
