Fig. 1: Cas12a-based gene drives display super-Mendelian inheritance rates modulated by temperature.

a Schematic of the CopyCat gene-drive system. The DsRed-marked Cas12a is a static transgene that provides the nuclease for copying the GFP-marked CopyCat element by allelic conversion, which is driven by the surrounding homology arms. b Cross scheme of males expressing Cas12a crossed to virgin females carrying the ebony CopyCat constructs (e1 or e4 gene drives). Collected F1 virgin females (Cas12a-DsRed + gene drive-GFP) were crossed to ebony mutant males to score germline transmission rates by screening the GFP marker in the F2 progeny. The dark-gray half arrow indicates the male Y chromosome. The green triangle in the F1 female indicates potential gene drive copying onto the wildtype chromosome. c Assessment of gene-drive activity in the germline of F1 females by phenotypically scoring the F2 progeny for the GFP-marked ebony CopyCat constructs. Measurements of inheritance rates are reported on top of the graph along with the average inheritance (%) (also as black bars on the graph) and the number of F1 crosses performed (n). d Summary of mutations/indels generated by both gene drives tested at 25 °C were detected through deep-sequencing analysis. The most prevalent indels (i) are depicted (i1-i5). Spaces between nucleotides represent the staggered cuts introduced by the Cas12a. The PAM sequence is highlighted in red, and gRNA is highlighted in blue. Nucleotides in black represent the genomic region surrounding the target site. The indel types and their relative percentages are shown next to each sequence. The raw scoring data and statistics are provided in Source Data file 1.