Keywords: animals

Reflection on the Challenges, Accomplishments, and New Frontiers of Gene Drives

M. Melesse Vergara, J. Labbé and J. Tannous,  BioDesign Research,  2022:9853416. 2022.
Ongoing pest and disease outbreaks pose a serious threat to human, crop, and animal lives, emphasizing the need for constantgenetic discoveries that could serve as mitigation strategies. Gene drives are genetic engineering approaches discovered decadesago that may allow quick, ...
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Ethics of Genome Editing

European Group on Ethics,  European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies,  2021.
This Opinion addresses the profound ethical questions raised and revived by them. It analyses various domains of application, from human health to animal experimentation, from livestock breeding to crop variety and to gene drives. With its wide view across areas, it identifies ...
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First they cloned Dolly the sheep. Now they’re targeting grey squirrels

Leake, J.,  The Times,  2020.
For 150 years they have wreaked havoc on Britain’s woods and wildlife, but the destructive reign of the grey squirrel could soon be over — ended by DNA editing to ensure that all future females are born infertile. Researchers at the Roslin Institute, the genetics laboratory ...
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Dolly the sheep scientists hope DNA editing can wipe out grey squirrels

McLaughlin, M.,  The Scotsman,  2020.
They have been poisoned, shot at, and stumbled into traps laid by those who regard them as a ruinous blight on the country’s woodland and wildlife. But now, the grey squirrel is facing arguably its biggest threat yet, with plans to harness the cutting edge of genetic science ...
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A natural gene drive system influences bovine tuberculosis susceptibility in African buffalo: Possible implications for disease management

P. van Hooft, W. M. Getz, B. J. Greyling and A. D. S. Bastos,  PLoS One,  14:e0221168. 2019.
Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) is endemic to the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) of Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (HiP) and Kruger National Park, South Africa. In HiP, the disease has been actively managed since 1999 through a test-and-cull procedure targeting BTB-positive buffalo. Prior ...
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Stakeholder attitudes towards the use of recombinant technology to manage the impact of an invasive species: Sea Lamprey in the North American Great Lakes

Thresher, REJ, M.; Drake, D. A. R.,  Biological Invasions,  21:575-586. 2019.
Several factors, including: (1) on-going difficulties of cost-effectively managing invasive species; (2) recent successes in using recombinant genetics to suppress mosquito populations; and, (3) developments in gene-drive technology, have re-invigorated interest in using genetic ...
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Conserving New Zealand’s native fauna: a review of tools being developed for the Predator Free 2050 programme

Murphy, ECR, J. C.; Broome, K. G.; Ryan, G. J.; Dowding, J. E.,  Journal of Ornithology,  160:883-892. 2019.
The endemic fauna of New Zealand evolved in the absence of mammalian predators and the introduction of the latter has been devastating. There have been numerous avian extinctions and 80% of the extant native avian taxa are currently threatened or at risk of extinction. Declines ...
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Controlling invasive rodents via synthetic gene drive and the role of polyandry

Manser, AC, S. J.; Sutter, A.; Blondel, D. V.; Serr, M.; Godwin, J.; Price, T. A. R.,  Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences,  286:9. 2019.
House mice are a major ecosystem pest, particularly threatening island ecosystems as a non-native invasive species. Rapid advances in synthetic biology offer new avenues to control pest species for biodiversity conservation. Recently, a synthetic sperm-killing gene drive ...
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Gene driving the farm: who decides, who owns, and who benefits?

Montenegro de Wit, M,  Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems,  43:1054-1074. 2019.
This commentary essay explores the social and ecological implications of gene-driving agriculture.
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Forcing the Farm

etc group,  etc group,  2018.
This report is being issued as an alert to governments, civil society organisations and grassroots movements. It points to how gene drives, while promoted as a tool for medicine and conservation, will find their real use in food and farming by agribusiness. It calls for a pause ...
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Identifying knowledge gaps for gene drive research to control invasive animal species: The next CRISPR step

Moro, DB, Margaret; Kennedy, Malcolm; Campbell, Susan; Tizard, Mark,  Global Ecology and Conservation,  13:e00363. 2018.
Invasive animals have been linked to the extinctions of native wildlife, and to significant agricultural financial losses or impacts. Current approaches to control invasive species require ongoing resources and management over large geographic scales, and often result in the ...
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CRISPR-based gene drives for pest control

McFarlane, GRW, C. Bruce A.; Lillico, Simon G.,  Trends in Biotechnology,  36:130-133. 2018.
Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-based gene drives (GDs) could be used to spread desirable genetic elements through wild populations. With the imminent development of this technology in vertebrates, we believe that it is timely to highlight two ...
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Correction to ‘Dodging silver bullets: good CRISPR gene-drive design is critical for eradicating exotic vertebrates’

Prowse, TAAC, Phillip; Ross, Joshua V.; Pfitzner, Chandran; Wittmann, Talia; Thomas, Paul,  Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,  285:1-2. 2018.
Proc. R. Soc. B 284, 20170799. (Published Online 9 August 2017). (doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.0799)We recently found an error in our calculation of the probability of a wild-type allele moving from s to j susceptible sites (), and acquiring the gene drive (), during gene-drive homing, ...
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Dodging silver bullets: good CRISPR gene-drive design is critical for eradicating exotic vertebrates

Prowse, TAAC, Phillip; Ross, Joshua V.; Pfitzner, Chandran; Wittmann, Talia A.; Thomas, Paul,  Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,  284:20170799. 2017.
Self-replicating gene drives that can spread deleterious alleles through animal populations have been promoted as a much needed but controversial ‘silver bullet’ for controlling invasive alien species. Homing-based drives comprise an endonuclease and a guide RNA (gRNA) that ...
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Is it time for synthetic biodiversity conservation?

Piaggio, AJS, G.; Seddon, P. J.; Alphey, L.; Bennett, E. L.; Carlson, R. H.; Friedman, R. M.; Kanavy, D.; Phelan, R.; Redford, K. H.; Rosales, M.; Slobodian, L.; Wheeler, K.,  Trends in Ecology & Evolution,  32:97-107. 2017.
Evidence indicates that, despite some critical successes, current conservation approaches are not slowing the overall rate of biodiversity loss. The field of synthetic biology, which is capable of altering natural genomes with extremely precise editing, might offer the potential ...
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Genetic control of invasive fish: technological options and its role in integrated pest management

Thresher, REH, K.; Bax, N. J.; Teem, J.; Benfey, T. J.; Gould, F.,  Biological Invasions,  16:1201-1216. 2014.
Genetic options for the control of invasive fishes were recently reviewed and synthesized at a 2010 international symposium, held in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, USA. The only option currently available "off-the-shelf'' is triploidy, which can be used to produce sterile males for a ...
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Ethical issues in field trials of genetically modified disease-resistant mosquitoes

D. B. Resnik,  Developing World Bioethics,  14:37-46. 2012.
Mosquito-borne diseases take a tremendous toll on human populations, especially in developing nations. In the last decade, scientists have developed mosquitoes that have been genetically modified to prevent transmission of mosquito-borne diseases, and field trials have been ...
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A novel sperm-delivered toxin causes late-stage embryo lethality and transmission ratio distortion in C. elegans

Seidel, HSA, M.; Li, J. L.; van Oudenaarden, A.; Rockman, M. V.; Kruglyak, L.,  PLOS Biology,  9:e1001115. 2011.
The evolutionary fate of an allele ordinarily depends on its contribution to host fitness. Occasionally, however, genetic elements arise that are able to gain a transmission advantage while simultaneously imposing a fitness cost on their hosts. We previously discovered one such ...
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Polar bodies–more a lack of understanding than a lack of respect

S. Schmerler and G. M. Wessel,  Molecular Reproduction and Development,  78:3-8. 2010.
Polar bodies are as diverse as the organisms that produce them. Although in many animals these cells often die following meiotic maturation of the oocyte, in other organisms they are an essential and diverse part of embryonic development. Here we highlight some of this diversity ...
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