Late last year I was asked to write a commentary for an article that was coming out in Genetics. The article is Unckless et al. (2017) “Evolution of resistance against CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive.” The authors addressed the issue of the high mutation rates of CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive and the potential to generate alleles in the population that are resistant to the drive effects (which I have mentioned briefly before on this blog). Long story short, the evolution of resistance is essentially inevitable.The article inspired the cover image for that month (click on the image for a link and information about the artist Kent Smith).

This could be viewed as a positive thing, depending on the application, and there are already strategies being proposed to address the mutation issue. I tried to put this into perspective and suggest some alternatives in my article: Reed (2017) "CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Drive: Growing Pains for a New Technology."