‘Gene drives’ could wipe out whole populations of pests in one fell swoop
Pest species are not news to continental Australia: animals either deliberately introduced or brought here accidentally by boat have wreaked havoc for decades. Gene driving is a technique that aims to humanely spread a "faulty" gene through a population and triggers population collapse.
Environment Institute ResearchersÌýe, , Ìýand suggests this gene editing technique could work.
"Typically, faulty alleles would not spread through populations, because the evolutionary fitness of individuals carrying them is reduced, meaning they will be less likely than non-faulty alleles to be passed on to the next generation. But the newly developedÌýÌýcanÌýÌýby creating gene-drive sequences that are much more likely to be passed on to the next generation."
Their paper published in the ,Ìýsuggests that under certain circumstances, genome editing could work.
There areÌýbiosecurity, regulatory and ethical questions that need to be considered around altering ecosystems, but this paper proves it may be possible.
Ìý
Read the whole article onÌý to investigate the realities and challenged behind gene driving.
This research was also featured inÌý
Ìý
Environment Institute ResearchersÌýe, , Ìýand suggests this gene editing technique could work.
"Typically, faulty alleles would not spread through populations, because the evolutionary fitness of individuals carrying them is reduced, meaning they will be less likely than non-faulty alleles to be passed on to the next generation. But the newly developedÌýÌýcanÌýÌýby creating gene-drive sequences that are much more likely to be passed on to the next generation."
Their paper published in the ,Ìýsuggests that under certain circumstances, genome editing could work.
There areÌýbiosecurity, regulatory and ethical questions that need to be considered around altering ecosystems, but this paper proves it may be possible.
Ìý
Read the whole article onÌý to investigate the realities and challenged behind gene driving.
This research was also featured inÌý
Ìý
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