ABOVE: A representative litter of pups. A white coat indicates that a certain gene had been disrupted by CRISPR-Cas9.
ADAPTED FROM GRUNWALD ET AL., NATURE, 2019.
Gene drive, a genetic engineering technology that pushes offspring to inherit a particular allele from one parent more frequently than normal, has already worked in insects. Now, researchers show it can succeed in vertebrates too. In a study published today (January 23) in Nature, the authors describe an approach that uses CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the female mouse germline and drive the expression of white fur and a red fluorescent protein.
“It’s the first paper robustly describing gene drive work in mammals,” says Bruce Whitelaw, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study.
According to coauthor Kimberly Cooper, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the project got started because she and her team wanted ...
