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I had never heard about gene drive before. It refers to making sure all children (and grandchildren etc) inherit a trait, even though the trait isn't necessari
by im2w1l 11y ago
I had never heard about gene drive before.
It refers to making sure all children (and grandchildren etc) inherit a trait, even though the trait isn't necessarily evolutionary beneficial for the organism. The way this is implemented in this case by having a gene that codes for proteins that insert the gene in chromosomes that do not already have it.
This means that by just releasing a few specimen with the gene drive, the entire population can be gene modified in not-that-many generations. A year may be sufficient for insects, since their generations are so short.
- ghshephard 11y ago"even though the trait isn't necessarily evolutionary beneficial for the organism." If the trait is negative, it will be selected out of the population. It's only if it's beneficial, or neutral, that that it will spread. What's particularly special about gene drive, is that it drives itself onto 100% of progeny, rather than the 50% expected by traditional mendellian genetics.
- im2w1l 11y agoIf the trait is completely neutral it will double every generation (until saturation is setting in). If the trait is like 10% negative then it will instead increase by a factor of 0.9*2 = 1.8, which is still pretty quick. Only if it is extremely negative, by more than halving amount of offspring, will it be selected out. That's in the short term. Presumably, some sort of resistance would evolve in the long term.
- dekhn 11y agoThese are all absurdly idealized models of actual population genetics. No trait is truly neutral. At the very least, this experimentation is likely to show some interesting real-world population genetics that we can measure.