'Gene drive': Scientists sound
alarm over supercharged GM organisms which could spread in the wild and cause
environmental disasters
Steve Connor Science Editor Sunday 02 August 2015
A powerful new technique for generating “supercharged” genetically modified
organisms that can spread rapidly in the wild has caused alarm among scientists
who fear that it may be misused, accidentally or deliberately, and cause a
health emergency or environmental disaster.Steve Connor Science Editor Sunday 02 August 2015
The development of so-called “gene drive” technology promises to revolutionise medicine and agriculture because it can in theory stop the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses, such as malaria and yellow fever, as well as eliminate crop pests and invasive species such as rats and cane toads.
However, scientists at the forefront of the development believe that in the wrong hands gene-drive technology poses a serious threat to the environment and human health if accidentally or deliberately released from a laboratory without adequate safeguards. Some believe it could even be used as a terrorist bio-weapon directed against people or livestock because gene drives – which enable GM genes to spread rapidly like a viral infection within a population – will eventually be easy and cheap to generate.
“Just as gene drives can make mosquitoes unfit for hosting and spreading the malaria parasite, they could conceivably be designed with gene drives carrying cargo for delivering lethal bacterial toxins to humans,” said David Gurwitz, a geneticist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
A group of senior geneticists have called for international safeguards to apply to researchers who want to develop gene drives, with strict security measures placed on laboratories to prevent the accidental escape of “supercharged” GM organisms that are able to spread rapidly in the wild.
“They have tremendous potential to address global problems in health, agriculture and conservation but their capacity to alter wild populations outside the laboratory demands caution,” the scientists say.
The researchers have drawn up a minimum set of safety rules to protect against laboratory escapes and have called for a public debate on the potential benefits as well as risks of a technology that allows geneticists to rapidly accelerate the inheritance of GM traits throughout an animal population within just a few generations.
Researchers have likened gene-drive technology to a nuclear chain reaction because it allows GM genes to be amplified within a breeding population of insects or other animals without any further intervention once the trait has been initially introduced. This is the case even if the trait is non-beneficial to the organism.
Laboratory experiments on fruit flies have shown that a modified gene introduced into one individual fly can take just a few generations to “infect” practically every other fly in the breeding population, in defiance of the normal rules of genetics which dictate a far slower spread.
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Kevin Esfeldt, a gene-drive expert at the Wyss Institute at
Harvard Medical School in Boston, said the technology was developed theoretically
about 10 years ago but it has only been made possible in the lab in the past
two years with the discovery of the sophisticated gene-editing tool
Crispr/Cas9.
Dr Esfeldt explained that gene drives relied on a “cassette”
of genetic elements that allowed a genetically modified gene to jump from one
chromosome to another within the same individual so that eventually all of the
sperm or eggs of the animal carried the GM trait, rather than half. This means
that virtually none of the offspring is eventually free of an introduced GM
trait.
Gene drives could benefit human health by altering insect
populations that spread human diseases, such as mosquitoes that transmit
malaria, dengue, chikungunya and Lyme disease, so that they were no longer a
threat, he said.
Debate still rages over genetically modified food after
nearly 20 years (Getty)
They could also be used to reverse the mutations that make
crop pests resistant to agricultural pesticides, or they might be used to
spread genetic traits within a population of an invasive species to help kill
it off, such as making the skin of cane toads introduced into Australia
non-toxic to indigenous predators.
“If we’re right about this, it’s a powerful advance that
could make the world a much better place, but only if we use it wisely,” Dr
Esfeldt said.
However, some scientists fear that the ease with which gene
drives can be generated will make them a target for any malign individual or
organisation with access to modern laboratory equipment.
Dr Gurwitz said the precise instructions for making gene
drives should be classified, just like the technology for making nuclear
weapons. However, Dr Esfeldt and the other 26 scientists who have written to
Science disagreed, arguing that complete openness and transparency was the best
defence against the use of gene drives as a bio-weapon because classifying the
information would be technically ineffective and politically counterproductive.
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