Here’s a question that occurs only to madmen and geneticists: How do you get a gene that kills an organism to spread through a whole population of that organism?
You can either make your gene deadly, and thus impossible to pass on, or not, and thus useless as a vector of attack. The solution has long been to try “silent” genes that can spread with no negative effects, either introducing a deadly weakness to a man-made chemical we withhold for a while, or by waiting for deadly activation by such a chemical. But recently, with the advent of advanced new in vivo gene editing technology, it’s become possible to make genes that seem to defy evolution — and that means we could soon start releasing animals carrying doomsday genes that spread with astonishing speed, quickly killing entire populations.
Such an animal is currently sitting in a laboratory at Imperial College London, an apocalypse mosquito carrying a gene that could one day end its entire species. It represents a controversial proposal to end the scourge of malaria, which kills hundreds of thousands of people each and every year, by wiping out the mosquitoes that spread the disease. It also represents a fundamentally new ability for humanity: the power to easily and selectively snuff out a subcategory of life on Earth. The name for this power is called gene drive.
Gene drive is simply the use of some strategy to artificially increase a gene’s inheritance rate. Such strategies are found all over nature, but despite decades of theorizing, nobody had a really viable way for mankind to harness this functionality through biotechnology. That’s changed thanks to the incredible advances in direct gene editing we’ve seen over the past half-decade, in particular the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing suite.
These “molecular scissors” are actually borrowed from viruses, allowing scientists to swap out a gene in a living organism for one of their choice, edit it right into the genome so it will be passed on as the cells reproduce. If you can get your gene spliced into the “germ cells,” the pre-sperm or -egg cells of these organisms, then you can even introduce a chance that it will be passed on to the next generation — classically, without gene drive, you can introduce a 50% chance.
The chance is 50% because germ cells, like virtually all other cell types in humans and mosquitoes, have two copies of our genome. When we splice in our attack gene, it will end up sitting across from a second, totally normal copy of the gene it just replaced. This means that when the two copies get pulled apart to form the half-genomes of two new, separate sperm cells, only one of those new sperm cells will have our spliced-in sequence. The other will carry the same gene it would have, regardless.
So, if our spliced-in gene lowers evolutionary fitness, then all that will happen is the other half of the offspring will thrive, and the infected individuals will be quickly bred out of the population. And even if it’s a seemingly harmless silent gene that does nothing at first, it will still spread too slowly to change the overall population much at all.
Our mosquito doomsday device gets around these problems by applying two innovations.
Learn more: ‘Gene drive’ breakthrough creates weaponized mosquito extinction strain
The Latest on: Gene drive
[google_news title=”” keyword=”gene drive” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Gene drive
- Gene variants linked to pesticide exposure may increase risk of Parkinson'son April 25, 2024 at 8:10 am
It's long been known that exposure to agricultural pesticides can greatly raise a person's odds for Parkinson's disease. New genetics research now reveals those who might be most vulnerable.
- NIH Reports a Gene-Based Therapy Restores Cellular Development and Function in Brain Cells from People with Timothy Syndromeon April 25, 2024 at 8:00 am
NIH Reports a Gene-Based Therapy Restores Cellular Development and Function in Brain Cells from People with Timothy Syndrome ...
- Nanoscope Therapeutics Enhances Mutation-Independent Retinal Gene Therapy Programs with Appointment of Allen C. Ho, MD, as Chief Medical Advisoron April 25, 2024 at 4:00 am
Nanoscope Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing gene therapies for retinal degenerative diseases, announced today the appointment of Allen C. Ho, MD, FACS, FASRS, as ...
- Grandmother Becomes Second Patient to Receive Kidney From Gene-Edited Pigon April 24, 2024 at 11:31 am
The pig carried a gene for producing a sugar called alpha-gal that had been ... The back-to-back surgeries were highly unusual, if not unprecedented, said Dr. Nader Moazami, chief of the division of ...
- Researchers uncover SNUPN gene responsible for a new muscular disorderon April 24, 2024 at 8:03 am
A study, published in Nature Communications, sheds light on a newly identified subtype of muscular dystrophy, revealing an unsuspected role of SNUPN gene in muscle cell function.
- A key gene helps explain how the ability to glide has emerged over-and-over during marsupial evolutionon April 24, 2024 at 8:00 am
People say "When pigs fly" to describe the impossible. But even if most mammals are landlubbers, the ability to glide or fly has evolved again and again during mammalian evolution, in species ranging ...
- CDB mum on Dr Gene Leon’s ‘immediate effect’ resignationon April 23, 2024 at 4:21 pm
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Tuesday remained mum on the resignation of its president, Dr Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon, who has also threatened to file a lawsuit against ...
- CDB President Dr Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon resigns amid controversyon April 23, 2024 at 11:05 am
Dr. Hyginus 'Gene' Leon has tendered his immediate resignation as President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), just months after being placed on administr ...
- Generative A.I. Arrives in the Gene Editing World of CRISPRon April 22, 2024 at 1:48 pm
Much as ChatGPT generates poetry, a new A.I. system devises blueprints for microscopic mechanisms that can edit your DNA.
- New Film Highlights Complexity of Governing Gene Drive Mosquitoes to Combat Malariaon April 21, 2024 at 11:22 pm
A radical new biotechnology could eliminate the mosquitoes that cause malaria, but in Uganda – where malaria is the leading cause of death – a lack of information and debate is undermining public ...
via Bing News