A team at the University of California, San Diego, has just shown an evolution-warping technology called a gene a drive can work in mice. But we don’t need to worry about it escaping the lab and wreaking environmental havoc—for now, anyway.
Super inheritance: A gene drive involves adding a “selfish” gene to animals that is then passed to their offspring at a rate higher than the usual 50-50 chance.
Killer idea: Scientists think they can use gene drives to wipe out wild populations of animals with genes that are bad for them. There’s a plan to kill off malaria mosquitoes, for example, and one conservation group wants to use a gene drive to eradicate invasive mice and rats on islands, where they prey on sea birds. Others say there’s a risk the technology could get out of control.
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