Are there different mechanisms to achieve gene drive?

Yes. There are several ways that preferential inheritance, or drive, is achieved in nature, and some of these also can be recreated in the laboratory.

Much attention has been paid to the mechanism called “homing” for achieving gene drive. Homing endonucleases are enzymes that exist in nature that allow a gene inherited from one parent to be duplicated in the genome of its offspring so that offspring carries two copies of the gene and will pass the gene on to all of its progeny. This mechanism is a form of over-replication and can easily be mimicked using CRISPR/Cas gene editing.