Right: By altering both chromosomes,
gene drives ensure both copies of the altered gene are inherited, leading to a 100 percent chance of passing it on.
Not exact matches
A
gene drive (right) copies and pastes itself into chromosomes from both parents,
ensuring it gets passed on more often.
The best way to
ensure that the genetically modified mosquitoes become the dominant type is for researchers to add something known as a «
gene drive» to the new mosquitoes.
(C) By
ensuring that the
gene is almost always inherited, the
gene drive can spread the altered
gene through a population over many generations, even if the associated trait reduces the reproductive fitness of each organism.
«Many different groups and the interested public will need to come together to
ensure that
gene drives are developed and used responsibly,» said James P. Collins, PhD, an evolutionary ecologist at Arizona State University and senior author of the Science paper.
JCVI, in collaboration with UC San Diego, recently completed a report on «Policy and Regulatory Issues for
Gene Drives in Insects» outlining specific suggestions that could help advance this promising approach for combatting insect - borne human disease and insect agricultural pests, while
ensuring that environmental safety and societal issues are addressed.
When coupled with the use of a
gene drive naturally occurring in mice, this technique could
ensure that all non-native mice on an infested island can be reached to affect an all - male - population unable to reproduce.
They are also investigating the use of a natural
gene drive system in mice to
ensure to
ensure that all of the non-native mice on an infested island can be reached and made nonreproductive.
From the evidence so far, however, the science threatens to outrace efforts to
ensure that
gene -
drive research is conducted safely.
Because the environment is shared by everyone, he is deeply concerned with
ensuring that
gene drives and other inherently collective technologies are only used after transparent, broadly inclusive, and well - informed discussions.
However, the problem is unsolved of how to make these strains useful by
driving the
genes concerned into wild populations, and especially how to
ensure the necessary absolutely unbreakable linkage of these
genes to a
driving system.»