Role of CRISPR Technology in Gene Editing of Emerging and Re-emerging Vector Borne Disease

*Kaushal Kumar Mahto, Pooja Prasad, Mohan Kumar, Harshita Dubey and Amar Ranjan*

### **Abstract**

Vector borne diseases are rampant across the world. Due to spread and establishment of vector species in different geographical areas, vector adaptation and resistance towards many insecticides the only option left is vector control for various vector borne diseases. Recent advancement in the field of genome editing have provided a variety of tools like, CRISPR, a novel genome editing techniques which can be applied for the control and prevention of many deadly diseases like dengue, chikungunya, filariasis, Japanese encephalitis and Zika. The present chapter is aimed to discuss the recent advancement in genome editing tools such as, their application, challenges, and limitations in vector control. Additionally, this chapter would potentially be advantageous to understand the hurdles, knowledge gaps in eliminating vector borne disease.

**Keywords:** CRISPR, gene editing, vector borne disease, insecticide, resistance

#### **1. Introduction**

Vector-borne disease account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases, affecting approximately 700,000 people each year and dengue alone accounts for more than 3.9 billion people in 129 countries [1]. Mosquitoes are becoming increasingly resistant to insecticides and antimalarial drugs, necessitating the development of new methods to combat the disease as the gap between frequent outbreaks has been decreasing now. Children are very prone to malaria and children under the age of five account for the majority of fatalities. To combat vector borne diseases scientific communities have been working for decades and have successfully developed several techniques like sterile insect technique (SIT), precision-guided sterile insect technique (PgSIT), Zink Finger (ZFN), transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALEN) and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPER). CRISPR is a novel gene editing technique in the scientific community developed by Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer A. Doudna of the United States who were awarded the Nobel Prize 2020 in the field of chemistry for discovering the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. CRISPER technique was initially introduced by Ishino et al. in the year 1987 [2] and

#### **Figure 1.**

*Countries using crisper as gene editing tool in different areas.*


#### **Table 1.**

*Showing mosquito borne disease and their distribution, burden and intervention.*

has been widely used in genome editing in mosquito species for a number of years [3–5]. CRISPER-Cas9 based genome editing has emerged as one pf the most effective, diverse, and adaptive technique for gene editing.

*Role of CRISPR Technology in Gene Editing of Emerging and Re-emerging Vector Borne Disease DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104100*

Countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Korea, Philippines, India, USA, Europe, China, and Japan are using crisper technique for combating much vector borne disease (**Figure 1**). Based on the burden of mosquito vector associated disease across various geographical areas there is an immediate requirement of advancement in these techniques (**Table 1**).
