Gene drive put to work for first time.

A disruptive technology that potentially could eliminate or reduce the need for insecticides may soon be coming to market. In a paper published April 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of California, San Diego biologists announced they have developed a gene drive to control an agricultural pest. The pest is the spotted wing drosophila, a fruit fly that damages berry and fruit crops. “This is the first gene drive system in a major worldwide crop pest,” said Omar Akbari, of UC San Diego. “This system could in the future be used to control populations of (drosophila).” A gene drive is a tool to spread a genetic alteration into a wild population of a certain species. In nature, there is on average a 50 percent chance of a parent passing a particular trait to an offspring. With a gene drive, a specified gene is inherited by all offspring, even if it is present in only one parent