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.

Comments

Nature finds a way.

[BitterOak]

Haven't they seen Jurassic Park?

Re: Nature finds a way.

[Rei]

Tell that to all of the extinct species throughout history. If there's one thing the geological record shows us is that nature quite often *doesn't* find a way.

Re: Nature finds a way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nature finds a way, but individual species do not

Re: Nature finds a way.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they introduce a gene drive in mice in New Zealand, the likelihood of it spreading around the world is pretty high. Ships are still vectors for the spread of rodents, and mice live for a couple of years. Would have to have very stringent safeguards in place to prevent the spread.

Extreme caution is warranted. There is likely no stopping it once it happens.

Good luck...

[xlsior]

...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.

Re: Good luck...

[Shane_Optima]

The "antidote" is this: female house mice. They're not in short supply, and they're guaranteed to not be a carrier so you can go on collecting them (for greater genetic diversity, let's say) even in the area of an outbreak. Wait for the mice to die out in the area, re-introduce unaffected mice. Wash, rinse, and repeat if necessary. It's not like we're talking about African elephants here. The average lifespan is what, a couple years maybe? And they breed like mad. And they're everywhere.

This is a complete non-issue. You're not going to accidentally make house mice go extinct worldwide. There aren't going to be hidden reserves of carriers laying dormant for years, just waiting to eradicate any re-introduction of the species in an area.

Re:Good luck...

[Shane_Optima]

It's curious how you managed to use some correct facts to support some curiously dire-sounding conclusions. First off, here is the distribution of the house mouse. Do you think that carriers will be accidentally introduced in all breeding populations simultaneously, worldwide? Including the massive captive populations? And don't get the wrong idea from that map; it's not like there's a continuous interbreeding population in that entire range. There are lots of natural barriers keeping the sub-populations separate.

Don't forget that each mice can create TONS of offspring, and those all interbreed again. They typically have 5-8 offspring at a time, and can have 5-10 litters a year. This happens FAST. The engineered feature will spread exponentially across the population, with no stopping it. It's an avalanche.

And the avalanche works in more ways than one: reestablishing the mice in places they've been accidentally wiped out in will be a very easy and rapid project. And their short lifespans and high fecundity significantly reduces the window where an unintended transplant can occur. Dead male mice don't tend to do so well at sneaking on boats.

Also, we know for a fact that females are not carriers, so in the case of a problem it's very easy to start new captive collections (for genetic diversity, let's say) using females plus a few known-unaffected males. You don't even need to pay to have the males tested; you just let them breed and see if they have any female offspring (and if not you don't let them intermix.)

And that's assuming that accidental releases happen. I'm not at all convinced that's likely given proper import controls and the fact that male stowaways are less likely to survive and enjoy a durable reproductive success in a foreign land.

But put that to one side: let's say the risk is high. So what? There is a 0% chance of the house mouse going extinct worldwide. Zero. But there's a very high chance that, given enough time, the house mouse will drive more than one New Zealand species to extinction.

Why Mosquitos?

[camperdave]

Why would they wipe out mosquitos instead of wiping out the true culprit: the malaria protozoa itself?

Re:Why Mosquitos?

[quenda]

Why would they wipe out mosquitos instead of wiping out the true culprit: the malaria protozoa itself?

Gene drive techniques depend on sexual reproduction, but protozoa reproduce asexually, and can lay dormant as cysts.

rst Gene Drive In Mammals Could Aid Vast New Zeala

[rickyslashdot]

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 ! ! !