Engineered Anti-Viral Sensor Kills Infected Mosquitoes

We employed a Cas13 technology to accomplish RNA-targeted knockdown in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. We exhibited effective knockdown of our target genes, resulting in decreased gene expression in both targets. We additionally engineer an antiviral strategy termed REAPER (vRNA Expression Activates Poisonous Effector Ribonuclease) to directly target deadly arboviruses including dengue and chikungunya. This strategy is able to reduce virus replication in mosquitoes by either knocking down viral RNA expression, or by killing the infected mosquitoes by exploiting the Cas13 collateral activity.