The promise and peril of gene drives

economist.com

28 points·lxm··6 comments

I am of the opinion of nuking blood sucking insects - major vectors of terrible diseases. Nature will find a way to fill in the food-tree. Yale University is discussing these issues from various angles [1]

[1]https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/editing-nature-a-c...

In most cases, evolution is going to win out over gene drives. They will be disabled, selected against, dropped out and worked around. Finding a gene drive that would truly wipe out a population is similar to finding a virus that would do the same. This appears to be very low. The population sizes of insects like anopheles mosquitoes mean that there will be ample chance for the species to find a way around the gene drive. The rate of evolution is proportional to population size and the selective coefficient, which are both huge in this case.

That's true in the long run, however in shorter time frames there's no reason that a gene drive couldn't establish itself in a local population.

You bring up viruses; the aim of a virus is survival, and wiping out its host is counterproductive. The most successful viruses are usually comparatively docile to prolong carriage (most extreme examples are endogenous retroviruses).

Link is paywalled. Reckon I had more than my 3 articles this week. Anyone has a free link?

Might I suggest opening the link in an incognito window?

That worked this time. Thanks :)

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