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CRISPR-based technologies offer enormous potential to benefit human health and safety, from disease eradication to fortified food supplies. As one example, CRISPR-based gene drives, which are engineered to spread specific traits through targeted populations, are being developed to stop the transmission of devastating diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.
Scientists have developed a gene drive with a built-in genetic barrier that is designed to keep the drive under control. The researchers engineered synthetic fly species that, upon release in sufficient numbers, act as gene drives that can spread locally and be reversed if desired.
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IMAGE: A blue magpie (Urocissa ornate), native to the rainforests of Sri Lanka, was photographed near the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a World Heritage site that was part a new study of. view more
Credit: Christopher Wills, UC San Diego
As the health of ecosystems in regions around the globe declines due to a variety of rising threats, scientists continue to seek clues to help prevent future collapses.
A new analysis by scientists from around the world, led by a researcher at the University of California San Diego, is furthering science s understanding of species interactions and how diversity contributes to the preservation of ecosystem health.
Along the western edge of Alaska s Aleutian archipelago, a group of islands that were inadvertently populated with rodents came to earn the ignominious label of the Rat Islands. The non-native invaders were accidentally introduced to these islands, and others throughout the Aleutian chain, through shipwrecks dating back to the 1700s and World War II occupation. The resilient rodents, which are known to be among the most damaging invasive animals, adapted and thrived in the new setting and eventually overwhelmed the island ecosystems, disrupting the natural ecological order and driving out native species.
A coordinated conservation effort that removed the rats from one of the islands formerly known as Rat Island has become a new example of how ecosystems can fully recover to their natural state in little more than a decade. The ecological rebound at newly named Hawadax Island (a return to the original Aleut name meaning the island over there with two knolls ) extended from lan