Introduction to Gene Drives
Is having a weighted die cheating in Yahtzee? If you could ensure that you’d always get a four-in-the-row, would you capitalize on the opportunity, even if it’s immoral?
Anthony James of UC Irvine and his team of biologists have been toying with this dilemma. In Summer 2018, James and his team revealed to about two hundred writers, directors, and producers of scientific fiction media a new piece of biotechnology: the practice of gene drives. In short, a gene drive is a tool that could make some biological phenomena a certainty (gene editing, basically).
For example, two brown-eyed parents can birth a blue-eyed child; in the real world, this is incredibly rare. With the use of gene drives, this could happen one hundred percent of the time. And the changes aren’t only apparent for one generation; these genetic changes are generational. If gene drives are used on these brown-eyed parents to create a blue-eyed child, that child will also have a blue-eyed child. Outside of these insignificant changes, gene drives can drastically impact entire species.
James’s team has been using these gene drives to protect against health dangers. While the work will take at least five years until public release, anti-malarial gene drives in Anopheles mosquitoes are currently deep in development. Lyme disease is also targeted; the sandflies that transmit the leishmaniasis carrying Lyme to ticks can also have these carrier genes straight-up deleted. Sadly, as hinted before, this work is far from ready for widespread use. Even in the most developed use of gene drives, the anti-malarial front, the output has only decreased the spread of malaria in these mosquitoes by around one or two percent. Instinct tends to kick in: should humans have this power? Is this not putting us in the place of gods?
Ethical Concerns about Gene Drives
Popular media has highlighted the ethical issues of genetic engineering: see the 1997 science fiction movie Gattaca. Set in the future, eugenics has taken over society. At conception, parents can choose (with enough money) whether or not to edit their child’s genetics; genes that could be purchased include physical strength, intelligence, and good looks . Some parents forego this practice and birth a child normally; an un-edited child is considered an “invalid”, cast from any chance at an upper-class life. Invalids take up menial tasks and live quaint lives, despite the government technically outlawing genetic discrimination.
Looking back into the real world, many of the same concerns arise. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI for short) brings up many ethical hang-ups of genetic engineering. Informed consent is a mainline issue: as many of the gene-editing would come from previous generations, would an affected person have given full consent to have their DNA changed? Wealth inequality also plays heavily into the issues of human genome editing. Say genome editing becomes widespread—the process would, at least for a while, be incredibly expensive. This lends itself as a socioeconomic issue; if only the elite can afford such genetic changes, the gap between classes grows only bigger.
The Future of Genetic Editing
Ignoring all ethical and moral dilemmas, gene drives is an interesting technology that promises a future of possible biological longevity. With the use of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), this genetic engineering can become exponentially more accurate and efficient. CRISPR makes targeted alleles act like building blocks; the scientists can rearrange DNA easily to reach desired effects. Valentino Gantz and Ethan Bier of UC San Diego have teamed up to explore the use of CRISPR in fruit flies. They were able to turn nearly an entire generation of these flies (and the first generation, on top of that) yellow: a previously recessive gene! These results proved the same, generation after generation. Despite some moral concerns (“What if some of the engineered flies spread the mutation?”), Gantz and Bier published their research to raucous feedback.
The future of genetic editing seems bright. Further development of gene drives ensures destruction of diseases like malaria and Lyme. It is imperative that resources be piled toward this technology, even with the ethical concerns surrounding it.
For further reading, see https://wyss.harvard.edu/media-post/crispr-cas9-gene-drives/