George Church’s group published in eLife an article entitled “Concerning RNA-guided gene drives for the alteration of wild populations“in which they describe how CRISPR could be used to alter the genome of animals in the wild. A possible application of this approach could be to edit the genome of mosquitoes to prevent them from propagating malaria. Because the engineered allele of the gene has been engineer to propagate in the population, this approach could have far reaching consequences in the dynamics of entire ecosystems. Science published an accompanying paper Regulating gene drives discussing the regulatory and security implications of this result.
What do you think about this research? Are excited by the perspective of eradicating malaria? Are you worried about the ecological consequences? Drop us a line by leaving a comment below?