Panel Endorses ‘Gene Drive’ Technology That Can Alter Entire Species
Marlene Breverman stashed this in "Gene Drive" technology
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on Wednesday endorsed research on a technology known as “gene drive,” which gives humans the power for the first time to alter or eliminate entire populations of organisms in the wild — like mosquitoes, mice or plants — through deliberate genetic manipulation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/science/national-academies-sciences-gene-drive-technology.html
Stashed in: Awesome, Bugs!, Darwin, CRISPR, DNA
"For centuries, people have tinkered in ever more precise ways with the genetic makeup of living things already well under our control: pets, farm animals, crops and assorted species of laboratory animals. But modifying wild animals has been stymied by the inability to choreograph the mating of organisms not under our dominion.
Gene drives overcome this limitation by ensuring that the chunk of genetic code containing them is transmitted to all of an individual’s offspring, even if it reduces their fitness or causes their annihilation. By linking pieces of DNA to the gene driver with new editing tools that make them easy to insert, scientists think they can spread desired traits through an entire wild species."
Just because we can... Should we?
8:11 AM Jun 08 2016