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First Gene Drive In Mammals Could Aid Vast New Zealand Eradication Plan (technologyreview.com)
wisebabo writes: Say goodbye to our little whiskered friends! There is an effort to wipe out not just any species, (there's been discussions to wipe out the mosquitos that carry Malaria), but a mammal. Specifically the house mouse which, along with other invasive species introduced by Westerners, have ravaged New Zealand's ecosystem. (Amongst other things they've rendered extinct many of the flightless birds there). They'll try using the "gene drive" in mammals, which is a new genetic weapon made possible by the editing system CRISPR-Cas9. Basically, it'll make all of the children of the genetically engineered mice male and then all of their children male and so on. This'll continue until there are no females left and the population will crash. If this is successful, they want to use this technique on other species until all of the predators on New Zealand are wiped out.
Haven't they seen Jurassic Park?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
some slut will ruin it all.
I can sorta see why they want to wipe out invasive species, but wiping out all predators is not a good idea! The prey of the predators that get wiped out will then over-run the country! In the American western states, coyotes and mountain lions have nearly been wiped out. The deer that they used prey on are now out of control, and devastating farm crops in those states!
Sausage fest.
So, 20 generations to wipe out all humans?
sexist and human population of the planet in one fell swoop.
It will only take 30-40 years after the virus is released for all viable females to be rendered inoperable and for the male race to regain its dominant hold over humanity :)
...keeping it contained.
Those mice got onto the islands accidentally in the past, and one of them can just as easily accidentally end up on another island/continent where they can instigate those populations to crash as well. May take longer if it's just a single individual, but if the effects do indeed persist across future generations then it will grow into a tidal wave over time. Very hard to stop if let loose in an unintended area, and can end up crashing entire ecosystems.
China's "One Child per family" law has resulted in massive numbers of abortions of females and a resulting drastic overabundance of males.
All problems solved.
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, and what happens with Ice-nine.
That's my platform. Oh, and a 150 percent tariff on Chinese goods, except for those imported by my company (that's Organization to you) because that increases employment of local residents.
produce a nascent populations that barely survive and will likely result in quick rapid mutations and possibly new species as natural selection tries to find a way. Most likely into a species that can change it's sex after adulthood or possess both sets of reproductive organs.
Because, rest assured, it will!
People last, right?
I mean otherwise, how will you know the other predators are gone first?
Don't let the cultures that kill of girl children because they all want sons get a hold of this...
Please be assured that the people proposing this idea have given it more thought than I have. (And, admit it, more than you have.) But nevertheless, we have the unique perspective of both genius and being unbiased (uninformed) outsiders. So our thoughts are very important!
Now, let me say this about that. Yeah, go for it!
We face many difficulties in our relationship to nature and the environment. And we are developing powerful tools to handle those difficulties. I say use those tools. Use reasonable caution, but ignore nutcase primitives who fight every step of progress.
Bold. Science can be bold or meek. History shows that bold gets shit done, and meek often leaves great discoveries buried for a century. Bold moves us forward, meek stagnates and stifles. Let's be BOLD! What could go wrong?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Mice were unintentionally introduced. Now we're modifying them to only have male offspring.
What if a modified mouse gets off the island and back to continental Europe or the US? Opposite problem - mice go extinct. That too would be BAD
He's moved on to talking about doing something similar to humans. Introducing any other elements at that point is neither here nor there.
About Cane Toads. or for that matter read Farley Mowats stories of what wolves actually eat.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What does it matter if they genetically engineer themselves out of existence?
I'm pretty sure this was the plot of the 12 Monkeys.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
What could go wrong?
I can already hear President Bannon asking, "Hey, can that be modified to just wipe out the mud people?"
Why would they wipe out mosquitos instead of wiping out the true culprit: the malaria protozoa itself?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
At least NZ has a lot of small islands they can test this on. Islands small enough that 'kill it with fire' would work.
But you ask it like someone who isn't interested in finding out the answer.
I'm too high to read the summary, but I'm hoping scientists aren't really planning to eradicate New Zealand. There are people there, right? Those guys that play rugby and do those war chants and stick their tongues out. It would be a shame to lose them. These are the guys I'm talking about.:
https://youtu.be/yiKFYTFJ_kw
I mean, if I'm on a rugby team and I show up for a game and the other team starts doing that shit, I'm forfeiting and going right home.
I'll just hope the headline is misleading and the crazy rugby dudes and the hobbits and shit that live in New Zealand are gonna be alright.
You are welcome on my lawn.
OUCH ! I hate to be the 'fear monger' here, but with CRISPR genetic modification, the changes are incorporated into the germ-line of that species, and will be passed down from generation - to - generation. This is the actual plan for the project, and it is being introduced into MAMMALS. Well, humans are also mammals, and similar enough to mice that the mouse line of mammals is very often used as the initial test-bed for medical research targeted at humans. How long will it take this CRISPR modification to jump species-lines, either from virus-aided transfer, or through some form of deliberate weaponization processes?
Damn, I'm kinda' glad that I'm over 70, and hopefully won't be around when (IF) this extinction-level event happens. Granted, it will take multiple generations to spread throughout the global population, but a 'kill-switch' function, or even a more elegant technique involving a basic 'count-down' trigger that self-terminates after a certain number of generation transfers (similar to, and based on, the process of telomere shrinkage with each reproductive cycle), COULD be incorporated into the process in order to limit run-away disasters if the genetic alteration does get loose, or manages to cross species lines.
I shudder to think of the implications of this research being developed to the point that it could target ANY species, and then the inevitable acquisition of the techniques by radicalized, medically-competent , scientists with either deep-pocket private backers, or state-sponsored support.
One geographic transfer / escpe process that pops to mind is a bird, or other long distance traveller, that dumps fecal matter contaminated with this gene-line altering process still active in the biological waste, which then gets eaten by another scavenger (a REALLY HUNGRY individual), and . . . boom - - - the CRISPER agent is suddenly introduced into a population outside of the targeted area, and could very well move from a geo-bound area (like islands) to a wide-open continental arena.
OK, so this is a '. . . sky is falling' scenario, but EVERY precaution needs to be considered - and planned for - when introducing a process that is deliberately designed for total species-line extermination, and there is just no way that ALL escape options will ever be able to be covered with 100% reliability.
Enjoy your nightmares ! ! !
redneck geek
Sounds like the results of the Chinese one-child-per-family policy.
Billions of misogynists just found out that mammals can be engineered to only have male children. No more floating the baby girls down the river. A few years and millions of secret investment and the male dynasties they've always dreamed of will be theirs. I'd bet the money is already flowing.
Honestly, there are few places on this planet that couldn't do with a good eradication of the European Black Rat. Even if they did this with the domestic Cat - if every male cat was either neutered, a professional breeding animal or a GE males only animal - a whole lot of the world's feral cat problems would be solved. The only issue would be with animals that are potentially at risk in their native habitats - such as the possum.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
With the mosquito experiments, the gene drive modified mosquitoes also get a gene that makes their eyes and other parts of their bodies glow red under laser light if the gene drive has taken hold.
So we do the same for the mice, and if it somehow jumps to humans, we distribute lasers to all the female humans so they'll know who to not mate with.
"I Still Call Australia Home".
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
There is no point in not using something for good because it could be also used for bad. The existence of CRISPR is known, so the genie is out of the bottle.
However, these techniques can't cause the nightmare you are considering. You need to inoculate the embryo to change it's genetics. So 'jumping species lines' would only be possible if the two species naturally interbred.
So, enjoy your fictional nightmares - but we will remain in the real world, where only possible scenarios need to be considered.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Think "Milo Yiannopoulos" writ large!
You say all that like it matters on a site where people just write whatever to pass/kill/waste time.
Don't mate with mice.
Well, it's not like we are the old lady who swallowed a horse.
How long until some Australian who grows fruit and is tired of possums (which are native to Australia) eating it all brings a modified possum back to Oz and releases it? Many 'pest' organisms are important parts of ecosystems elsewhere in the world.
I think so, Brain, but I don't see how any of the books I saw Amazon have under "Featured" in their "Science & Math" section will help matters.
The gene drive won't be able to jump species to get to humans. It won't get even to rats, as mice and rats are too different. Yet, it is likely that all species of mice on all continents will be gone if this is implemented. That's a much huger effect than wiping some mosquito species.
You criticize the people who say, "But what if something bad happens?" But something bad happening is actually quite besides the point. Yes, something bad will happen, we will learn from it, something new bad will happen... eventually you do get to the gorillas that will die in the winter.
So, if we were to do this and the mice get to where we don't want them, your idea of what will happen is that nobody will do anything about it and those populations will collapse as well. No, say, doing something else to eradicate the unintentionally affected population and then let unaffected regions move in and repopulate? Or something else? I don't know, but at least I'm more imaginative than you.
I just went through a whirlwind education of what Left and Right used to mean and the scary thing is that both the liberals and conservatives are pretty far to the Left. The only real disagreement they have is what the government should tell the people they have to do.
The things that populate the Raimi-Tapert universes, like the Hercules and the Warrior Princesses.
...but what went through my mind was, so now we're going to have mosquitoes that shoot lasers from their eyes... Great!
I don't get it. If these mice have all male offspring, why won't they be out-bred by the mice that have females too? Why would a non-advantageous mouse gene be passed down and take over? Wouldn't natural selection kill off the genetically modified mice? If there end up being a bunch of males with very few females, most of the males won't pass down their genes, but all of the females will. Thus making sure the female-offspring-having normal mice survive and the males-only mice die off. What am I missing?
Wikipedia, then. Start by reading about how human and also other mammalian hermaphrodites are almost never (possibly never in recorded history?) fertile as both males and females because of how unusual it would be to have a fully functional testicle and ejaculatory ducts and prostate *and* a fully functional ovary and vagina and uterus instead of the usual middle ground of streak gonads, blind vaginas, nonexistent sperm, etc. Possibly the most plausible way such a being could form would be via a chimeric hermaphrodite... but such an organism would sire or give birth to regular offspring, not hermaphrodites.
In other words, mammals aren't frogs. And even if there's some weirdass brand of mammalia I'm not familiar with that does this, that doesn't mean a species from Rodentia could or would copycat them over the course of a few generations just because there are too many males around.
While I don't disagree that risk and failure are an unavoidable part of science (or indeed being alive), for the sake of sanity and clear thinking (not to mention for the sake of the numerous endangered species of New Zealand) I think the primary argument should be about the nature of the risks we face here. Arguing whether or not the risk is worth it should come only after we roughly agree on what those risks are. Even for "unknown unknowns"... you can maybe make those arguments (as some did) when you're testing the world's first atomic bomb or something, but this right here simply is not a very black swan-prone project.
Well we can always just turn the gene back on if we start getting too many males...
There actually are some such cases. They're referred to as the "guevedoces", a particular inbred South American population for whom a significant number of females transform to male at puberty. They're genetically and biochemically and culturally *fascinating* people.
You could sell it to societies who value male offspring more than female offspring and watch these antiquated societies die off.
There actually are some such cases. They're referred to as the "guevedoces", a particular inbred South American population for whom a significant number of females transform to male at puberty. They're genetically and biochemically and culturally *fascinating* people.
As god as my witness, upon reading your post I was positive that "guevedoces" was going to end up being a Spanish epithet for regular transgendered people.
But yeah, I've already heard of that syndrome (though I wasn't aware of its special prevalence in DR). And, like I said, it is not going to produce individuals who are fertile as both males and females. If you have fully functional testes, you almost certainly do not have functional ovaries (to say nothing of a fully formed uterus, vagina, and the hormonal ability to ovulate and produce sperm properly.) Even if you stipulate they don't have to be fertile as both male and female at the same time, it's still not a realistic outcome. The hermaphrodite species that people point to have vastly different sexual differentiation systems, many not even having the XY chromosome system at all. The evolution of things like endothermy (responsible for scrotums, among other things) and breasts must have tremendously changed the dynamics of sexual differentiation.
This doesn't even work on mosquitoes, much less mice. Or humans.
http://www.nature.com/news/gene-drives-thwarted-by-emergence-of-resistant-organisms-1.21397
Humans are the most destructive organism this planet has ever had. We have caused mass extinction rivalled only by the meteor strike which killed dinosaurs.
Freeing the planet from its ecosystem-destroying, climate-altering, globally spread invasive species is a nightmare to you?
I moved to NZ from Scotland 3 years ago, I live on a little 10 acre "lifestyle block" on the north island.
Coming from N.Europe it's weird seeing things like hedgehogs running around here.
Brought here by the europeans who wanted to terra form NZ into something almost recognisable as the place the left behind.
They brought just about everything from the British Isles, except the fox (thankfully).
I recently came across a nest of hedgehogs in my barn and I did some online research as I think I might have made the mother abandon the nest by discovering it.
Found Hedgehogrescue NZ
Now coming from Scotland I know that there was an attempt to eradicate them from the Hebrides as they were eating the native bird eggs.
So why would Kiwi's (NZ-ers) want to save Hedgehogs if the goal is to make NZ more like it was where the Kiwi bird can roam free and re-establish on the mainlands?
I'll go further, what about the domestic cat? If you get rid of the all the mice (& rats) what does the (large) population of wild domestic cats live off?
Wild pigs too? I could go on...
I'm all for the eradication of the NZ mosquitos. :)
along with other invasive species introduced by Westerners
I just want to state for the record that I have never been within 1000 nautical miles of New Zealand. Don't blame this on me too. I have enough White Guilt baggage to contend with as it is.
On a more serious note, it seems that this plan does not take into consideration the most basic principle of natural selection: survival of the fittest (or in other words, the genes of those that are able to produce the most offspring will start to dominate in a population). This plan on the other hand wants to introduce just a small number of individuals in the population in the hopes that their genes will spread to the whole population, while at the same time the very same genes are responsible for the carriers eventually having less offspring than non-carriers (even if it is not in the first generation). Well, I assume they know more about biology than I do...
Won't happen.
Firstly, instead of a lab-friendly non-viral method for CRISPR modification, you'd have to use a viral delivery method, and a virus that spreads easily and is hard to detect or contain. If you had one of those, you might as well just kill people with it directly, instead of just using it to give them a gene that makes them father only males.
Secondly, you'd have to find a way to keep anybody from noticing that some males were only fathering male offspring. You'd have to keep this a secret for several generations of that species. If it was humans, there's no way it would go unnoticed.
Thirdly, it would have to be irreversible. Somehow, in addition to using CRISPR to set the process off in the first place, you'd have to find a way to prevent anyone from using CRISPR to reverse it, and also prevent anyone from taking other measures to contain the event, like just sterilising the affected males.
That's an absurdly unlikely confluence of scenarios you're worried about.
Good plan! I hope they to the same with other predators like possums and rats. Ive lived in NZ for some time and the local birds there are a) very unique and vulnerable and b) dying out faster than anyone thought.. so most of the current plans on breeding new kiwis and takahes, kakas, hihis, wekas and so on just delay the problem. Hopefully until a master plan is found . Did you know that almost all lizards are endangered too? But, I just had the idea of what happens and history repeats itself, this time with one of the male GE mice leaving NZ and travelling to continental asia or europe...
But what if something goes catastrophically wrong, for several decades, if not centuries, without anybody noticing?
What if, after it's all gone wrong for several decades if not centuries, we notice, but it's too late to reverse process X, using process X again? What if decades or centuries have gone by and we've collectively forgotten to develop any methods or technology superior to process X?
What if cheese-scientists invent a kind of cheese that just keeps growing and converting its surroundings into cheese, incredibly slowly, and also everyone in the world simultaneously becomes too stupid to deal with the supercheese? That too would be BAD.
WINKING EMOTICON
Or make a second modification so it only produces gay males.
What if one mouse from New Zealand boards a ship headed elsewhere?
What if they subsequently introduce the gene drive to mice living in Eurasia, America or Africa?
Who's going to stop the mechanism and prevent the mouse population from collapsing in places where it wasn't meant to?
What have they ever done to us?
Evolution doesn't work that way.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
First you have mice and rats.
Then you have chipmunks and squirrels, which are just rats with fluffy tails.
There's also Canada geese, which are just big fat flying rats.
And then you have deer, which are just rats on steroids.
What if one of those mice gets to other countries, wouldn't that crash that country's mice population and so on? Other countries wouldn't mind getting rid of all aedes mosquitos but not their native mammals species. This plan is selfish and uncalled for.
Nature finds a way. --- Haven't they seen Jurassic Park?
I dislike Jeff Goldblum but I absolutely HATE that line.
Life finds a way....unless it DOESN'T. Just ask the Dodo, the dinosaur, the Neanderthal, and all of the other extinct species. But you can't, they're extinct; ask one of these instead.
Life TRIES to find a solution (anthropomorphising life? It that legal?) but -- like everything else -- has resource restraints. If there's time and it can and it's lucky, it succeeds and offspring enjoys the benefits. If not, there's no offspring. Either way NO PROBLEM. That is unless you're the missing offspring.
Gaia? Save the Earth? Complete nonsense, the EARTH will do just fine with or without us. Just see Venus, Mars, or even Jupiter. Now the biosphere that we live in? That you might want to save.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
You do realize the Sisisphyean task you have set yourself up for?
I congratulate you on your wit, persistence and clarity of thought.
But Murphy was an optimist.
With the mosquito experiments, the gene drive modified mosquitoes also get a gene that makes their eyes and other parts of their bodies glow red under laser light if the gene drive has taken hold.
So we do the same for the mice, and if it somehow jumps to humans, we distribute lasers to all the female humans so they'll know who to not mate with.
Except the researchers messed up and actually brought along some cat genes. So the afflicted males would just chase the laser. Most women thought this was endearingly attractive and mated with the transgenic individuals.
Disaster ensued. But not before YouTube failed under the weight of uploaded male laser chasing videos.
So one or two of these modified mice escape to other nations and the world wide existence of mice is extinguished. Many creatures feed on mice as a basic part of their diet.
Released in large enough numbers on an island
Or in a Google or Amazon R&D facility
the daughterless rodents
i.e. S/W developers
could, over the course of several months to a few years, result in a ... population that is, so to speak, all Mickey and no Minnie. Then (they) die out.
Well. It hasn't happened yet. The pesky males keep finding ways to breed.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
just came here to say, this is essentially the plot of season 2 of helix http://www.imdb.com/title/tt27... group of immortals wants to control the world population. one faction wants to go "nuclear", and another wants to introduce something like this to make only males.
If you really want to lose sleep realize that any smart undergrad could do this without particularly unusual equipment...
I think it's for reasons like this that the future will have zero privacy.
One would think if rats can do that:
https://www.boatingwithdawsons...
Mice might do this as well or stow away in boxes, containers etc. getting moved on a wider journey... Good luck to all the critters/birds on other continents to depend on mice for their main staple - birds of prey etc.
Do people have brains these days and not learned from zebra mussels? This one is devastating, wipes out a species including sub-species and/or closely related. There are cross-breeds between close relatives, right?
Maybe people thinking of playing with this need a booster chromosome somewhere?
I have seen first hand the damage mice can do when my old apartment was infested with the things and anything that got rid of them would be great.
OK, so this is a '. . . sky is falling' scenario, but EVERY precaution needs to be considered - and planned for - when introducing a process that is deliberately designed for total species-line extermination
Well it's good we have Slashdot, otherwise no-one else would have thought about this.
How you think these things work?
"Introduced by westerners".
Factually true, but sadly that is not what is implied. New Zealand was hardly pristine before The Westeners arrived.
Be good and mention the earlier work The Pacific Islanders did to wipe out the moa and the Haast's eagle. All by themselves.
The author could have just written "the arrival of mankind".
huh?
Virus that can infect multiple species aren't even uncommon enough to raise interest.
This is about the *gene* jumping species, which is nonsense for animals (plants are another matter, and I can't even guess as to other kingdoms).
That is, they're editing the genes of the released mice, not infecting the mice.
hawk
"Changes to species should be approached with fear and trembling ... and a very powerful computer!"
Robert A. Heinlein, "Glory Road", 1963
"Never trust anyone who is -too- confident in what they are going to do!"
Me, 1968
The target for NZ is Rattus Rattus and the Brushtail possum, they are the main predators that raid nests for both eggs and nestlings. The technique has so far been tested in mice but they are not the first concern. Stoats, weasels, feral cats are all issues in NZ but the rats and possums are the big targets since they don't just go after adult birds. Hedgehogs have been seen raiding eggs, but they prefer slugs and the population is small so they might be able to live alongside the native species with no major impact.
Another big problem is actually German Wasps, they eat the honeydew that the birds need, significantly harming breeding success.