In a preprint posted to bioRxiv last week (July 4), researchers at the University of California, San Diego, report using a CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive in mammals for the first time. Gene drives ensure that offspring preferentially inherit one parent’s particular allele, so that a variant can quickly spread through a population even if it is detrimental to reproduction or survival. The UCSD researchers were able to get a drive to work in the germlines of developing female mice, but only some of the time; on average, the offspring inherited the desired allele 73 percent of the time (as opposed to the typical 50 percent without a gene drive).
“These results demonstrate that the CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive mechanism can be implemented to simplify complex genetic crosses in laboratory mice and also contribute valuable data to the ongoing debate about applications to combat invasive rodent populations in island communities,” the authors write ...
