3 ms·

In this example, humans would have to willingly propagate whatever crops have been altered to include the gene drive and have reduced yield. It would be trivial

by abcc8 8y ago

In this example, humans would have to willingly propagate whatever crops have been altered to include the gene drive and have reduced yield. It would be trivially easy to just plan a different cultivar of whatever transgenic crop was affected or just use the same CRISPR-Cas9 technology to remove the gene drive from the genome. I think that the point missed in this and many of the other comments is that gene drives don't follow typical mendelian inheritance patterns - they propagate in all progeny but can't 'infect' other individuals in a population.

deogeo 8y ago
No willing propagation is required - if you're unlucky and your crops get pollinated with the useless-for-food gene, then all their progeny will carry the gene as well. How would you stop this gene from spreading throughout the population? Cultivate everything in hermetically sealed greenhouses?
- whatshisface 8y ago
  The offspring of the useless-for-food plants won't make it to reproduction themselves if humans don't nurture them along. Farm plants are completely dependent on constant human intervention to survive, that's why there are no natural cornfields. What's being proposed would have to be a "superweed," able to outcompete all of the plants that are already out there and trying to grow in cornfields.
  - deogeo 8y ago
    So just go through your cornfield, examine each stalk of corn if it's carrying the gene, and if so, pull it out? It's not competing the same way a weed competes - all it has to do is pollinate the other plant. A weed can't do that.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      You can't just jump straight to the end state of the air being completely packed with compromised pollen. The gene would have to work its way through the seed distribution system, and that's where it would be stopped. Here's how a country could control an attack: If a field contains the gene, burn it (don't bother discriminating between carriers and non-carriers). Don't plant seeds that came from fields that had the gene. As a result, the initial attack will last only for one generation, no worse than if the attacker killed the plants. This is practical because the initial attack will be limited to a small number of fields that the country will be able to afford to loose.
      - deogeo 8y ago
        How do you know when the attack has begun? If < 1% of a field carries the gene, you won't know it's infected. You re-use the seeds, and the wind blows the pollen, into multiple fields, so now you have many fields, each with a tiny proportion of infected. What do you do when 10% of the fields has 1% infected plants, and the remaining 90% has an unknown, but smaller % of infected?
        whatshisface 8y ago
        In order for that to work, the gene would have to be designed so that it spread across the nation before it became significant in any one cornfield. Pollen gets spread inside of a single field a lot more than it gets spread from field to field, so that would be difficult. It's similar to how an extremely deadly virus won't spread as far as a strain of the common cold.

by abcc8 8y ago

deogeo 8y ago

No willing propagation is required - if you're unlucky and your crops get pollinated with the useless-for-food gene, then all their progeny will carry the gene as well. How would you stop this gene from spreading throughout the population? Cultivate everything in hermetically sealed greenhouses?

whatshisface 8y ago
The offspring of the useless-for-food plants won't make it to reproduction themselves if humans don't nurture them along. Farm plants are completely dependent on constant human intervention to survive, that's why there are no natural cornfields. What's being proposed would have to be a "superweed," able to outcompete all of the plants that are already out there and trying to grow in cornfields.
- deogeo 8y ago
  So just go through your cornfield, examine each stalk of corn if it's carrying the gene, and if so, pull it out? It's not competing the same way a weed competes - all it has to do is pollinate the other plant. A weed can't do that.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    You can't just jump straight to the end state of the air being completely packed with compromised pollen. The gene would have to work its way through the seed distribution system, and that's where it would be stopped. Here's how a country could control an attack: If a field contains the gene, burn it (don't bother discriminating between carriers and non-carriers). Don't plant seeds that came from fields that had the gene. As a result, the initial attack will last only for one generation, no worse than if the attacker killed the plants. This is practical because the initial attack will be limited to a small number of fields that the country will be able to afford to loose.
    - deogeo 8y ago
      How do you know when the attack has begun? If < 1% of a field carries the gene, you won't know it's infected. You re-use the seeds, and the wind blows the pollen, into multiple fields, so now you have many fields, each with a tiny proportion of infected. What do you do when 10% of the fields has 1% infected plants, and the remaining 90% has an unknown, but smaller % of infected?
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        In order for that to work, the gene would have to be designed so that it spread across the nation before it became significant in any one cornfield. Pollen gets spread inside of a single field a lot more than it gets spread from field to field, so that would be difficult. It's similar to how an extremely deadly virus won't spread as far as a strain of the common cold.