Austin Burt - Selected Publications#

Burt A. 2003. Site-specific selfish genes as tools in applied population biology. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 270:921-928.

Paper setting out the paradigm to control disease vector and pest populations with small inoculative releases of nuclease-based gene drive constructs to suppress target populations or otherwise make them less harmful.

Burt A, Trivers R. 2006. Genes in conflict: the biology of selfish genetic elements. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Scholarly monograph reviewing all the major types of natural gene drive systems (gamete killers, sex ratio distorters, selfish mitochondria, homing, retro-homing, and transposable elements, supernumerary centromeres, B chromosomes, etc.) in terms of their molecular, cellular, organismal, population, and evolutionary biology. The first book on these unusual life forms, essentially defining the field of intra-genomic conflict, it remains the standard text.

Deredec A, Godfray HCJ, Burt A. 2011. Requirements for effective malaria control with homing endonuclease genes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 108:E874-E880.

Eckhoff PA, Wenger EA, Godfray HCJ, Burt A. 2017. Impact of mosquito gene drive on malaria elimination in a computational model with explicit spatial and temporal dynamics. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 114:E255-E264.

Beaghton A, Hammond A, Nolan T, Crisanti A, Godfray HCJ, Burt A. 2017. Requirements for driving antipathogen effector genes into populations of disease vectors by homing. Genetics 205:1587-1596.

Burt A, Deredec A. 2018. Self-limiting population genetic control with sex-linked genome editors. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 285:20180776.

Four exemplar papers laying the theoretical foundations for the new field of population genomic engineering:

Windbichler N, Menichelli M, Papathanos PA, Thyme SB, Li H, Ulge UY, Hovde BT, Baker D, Monnat RJ, Burt A*, Crisanti A*. 2011. A synthetic homing endonuclease-based gene drive system in the human malaria mosquito. Nature 473:212-215.

Hammond A, Galizi R, Kyrou K,Simoni A, Siniscalchi C, Katsanos D, Gribble M, Baker D, Marois E, Russell S, Burt A, Windbichler N,

Crisanti A, Nolan T. 2016. A CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive system-targeting female reproduction in the malaria mosquito vector Anopheles gambiae. Nat. Biotechnol. 34:78-83.

Two experimental papers demonstrating nuclease-based gene drive and population suppression in lab populations of malaria mosquitoes:

Burt A, Carter DA, Carter GL, White TJ, Taylor JW. 1996. Molecular markers reveal cryptic sex in the human pathogen Coccidioides immitis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93:770-773.

Goddard MR, Godfray HCJ, Burt A. 2005. Sex increases the efficiency of natural selection in experimental yeast populations. Nature 434:636-640.