Revision as of 20:37, 6 October 2018

I am working towards organizing publications about gene drive topics here---this is not a complete listing. There is a lot of overlap with the topics of Sterile Insect Technique to suppress population numbers.

Misconceptions

Gene drive, to genetically engineer a population, and population suppression techniques, such as sterile insect technique, are often confused in the general media as being equivalent to each other. There is overlap in the methods and technologies used to achieve each, and they are not mutually exclusive, but they are two different approaches.

The recent focus on CRISPR/Cas9 has also caused a misconception of the equivalency between gene drive and CRISPR/Cas9. There are many more forms of gene drive than simply using a CRISPR/Cas9 mechanism and CRISPR/Cas9 drive is very similar to homing endonuclease drive.

There is also a misconception that this is a very new technology that only appeared in the last few years. However, work on gene drive goes back several decades to at least Curtis 1968 and is even proposed by Sandler and Novitski 1957. Many people are also surprised to learn that releases of mosquitoes, with modified chromosomes capable of both gene drive and population suppression, were carried out in field experiments in France in the 1970s (Laven et al. 1972).