Gene drives have been proposed as valuable tools in the fight against a range of globally important issues, including vectors of disease, invasive species and agricultural pests. These approaches are classified primarily based on their persistence and/or invasiveness. Here we consider persistent (i.e. self-sustaining) and low-invasiveness (i.e. threshold-dependent) approaches using engineered underdominance as a case study.
Gene drive is a phenomenon whereby a particular gene (or suite of genes) can bias inheritance in its (their) own favour, thus allowing it to increase in frequency over successive generations, even when deleterious to carrier individuals (Sinkins and Gould, 2006; Alphey, 2014, ; Champer et al., 2016; NASEM, 2016; Leftwich et al., 2018;) (see Raban and Akbari, Chapter 8; Champer, Chapter 9, this volume). This may occur by a range of natural or synthetic mechanisms, most of which act in one of two ways: (i) conversion of progeny individuals into other genotypes; or (ii) reducing the fitness (or killing) of progeny individuals of certain genotypes.
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