More on Gene Drives


>.....drive-mediated genome alterations are not permanent on an evolutionary
timescale. While gene drives can spread traits through populations even if they are costly to each
individual organism, harmful traits will eventually be outcompeted by more fit alleles after the
drive has gone to fixation. Highly deleterious traits may be eliminated even more quickly, with
non-functional versions appearing in large numbers even before the drive and its cargo can
spread to all members of the population. Even when the trait is perfectly linked to the drive
mechanism, the selection pressure favoring the continued function of Cas9 and the guide RNAs
will relax once the drive reaches fixation. Maintaining deleterious traits within a population
indefinitely is likely to require scheduled releases of new RNA-guided gene drives to periodically
overwrite the broken versions in the environment."


Concerning RNA-Guided Gene Drives for the Alteration of Wild Population
Kevin M. Esvelt, Andrea L. Smidler, Flaminia Catteruccia, & George M. Church

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