{"id":525,"date":"2015-08-07T03:39:23","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T03:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/?p=258053"},"modified":"2015-08-07T04:38:32","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T04:38:32","slug":"unanimous-international-consensus-reached-by-26-scientists-for-conducting-gene-drive-research-responsibly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2015\/08\/07\/unanimous-international-consensus-reached-by-26-scientists-for-conducting-gene-drive-research-responsibly\/","title":{"rendered":"Move over, autonomous AI weapons, there’s a new risk in town: ‘gene drives’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wyss Institute scientists believe that synthetic gene drives, if researched responsibly, might be used in the future to render mosquito populations unable to transmit malaria (credit: CDC)<\/p><\/div>\n

An international group of 26 experts, including prominent genetic engineers and fruit fly geneticists, has unanimously recommended a series of preemptive measures to safeguard gene drive research from accidental (or intentional) release from laboratories.<\/p>\n

RNA-guided gene drives are genetic elements — found naturally in the genomes of most of the world’s organisms — that increase the chance of the gene they carry being passed on to all offspring. So\u00a0 they can quickly spread through populations if not controlled.<\/p>\n

Looking to these natural systems, researchers around the world, including some\u00a0 scientists, are developing synthetic gene drives that could one day be leveraged by humans to purposefully alter the traits of wild populations of organisms to prevent disease transmission and eradicate invasive species.<\/p>\n

What could possibly go wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>These synthetic gene drives, designed using an RNA-guided gene editing system called CRISPR<\/a>, could one day improve human health and the environment by preventing mosquitoes and ticks from spreading diseases such as malaria and Lyme; by promoting sustainable agriculture through control of crop pests without the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides; and by protecting at-risk ecosystems from the spread of destructive, invasive species such as rats or cane toads.<\/p>\n

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Most genome alterations don\u2019t persist in nature. Only 50 percent of transgenic mosquito offspring (left) will carry the altered gene, so it may persist at low frequency or go instinct. With gene drive (right), using CRISPR\/Cas9, all of the offspring will carry the altered gene and will be inherited through the population. (credit: adapted from Wyss Institute video)<\/p><\/div>\n

However, the development of RNA-guided gene drive technology calls for enhanced safety measures. That’s because its capability to also affect shared ecosystems if organisms containing synthetic gene drives are accidentally or deliberately released from a laboratory. This potential risk is especially relevant with highly mobile species such as fruit flies or mosquitoes.<\/p>\n

Guidelines available<\/strong><\/p>\n

“One of the great successes of engineering is the development of safety features, such as the rounding of sharp corners on objects and the invention of airbags for cars, and in biological engineering we want to emulate the process of designing safety features in ways relevant to the technologies we develop,” said Wyss Core Faculty member George Church<\/a>, Ph.D., who leads the Synthetic Biology Platform at the\u00a0Wyss Institute<\/a>. Church is also the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School<\/a> and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the Wyss Institute, enhanced protocols for safely and securely researching emerging biotechnologies,\u00a0including RNA\u2013guided gene drives<\/a>, have\u00a0already been formally implemented<\/a>. The safeguards were put in place proactively, step\u2013by\u2013step, in direct parallel with the development of the first RNA-guided gene drives at the Wyss Institute.<\/p>\n

The working documents\u00a0have been made publicly available<\/a>\u00a0by the Institute to encourage widespread adoption of multi-tier confinement and risk assessment procedures. Church was instrumental in the design of the enhanced biosafety and biosecurity protocols.<\/p>\n

Now, research teams from the Wyss Institute and University of California, San Diego<\/a> — the only two groups to have published work on RNA-guided CRISPR gene drives — have proactively assembled an international group of 26 experts, including prominent genetic engineers and fruit fly geneticists, to unanimously recommend a series of preemptive measures to safeguard gene drive research.<\/p>\n

Open-access research recommended<\/strong><\/p>\n

Led by Wyss Institute Technology Development Fellow, Kevin Esvelt<\/a>, Ph.D., and UC San Diego Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Ethan Bier<\/a>, Ph.D., the 26 authors of this consensus recommendation, which is published online in\u00a0Science Express<\/em>\u00a0journal and includes representatives from every major group known to be working on gene drives, calls for all researchers to use multiple confinement strategies in order to prevent the accidental alteration of wild populations.<\/p>\n

The group also provides explicit recommended guidelines for regulatory authorities evaluating proposed new work. And Esvelt and others are hopeful that the field of gene drive research is so nascent that it may be possible to build a community of scientists that share their research with the public throughout the development process.<\/p>\n

“This would promote collaboration and avoid needless duplication of efforts among different research groups while allowing diverse voices to help guide the development of a technology that could improve our shared world,” said Esvelt. “And eventually, it might inspire a similar shift towards full transparency in other scientific fields of collective public importance.”<\/p>\n

“The scientific community has a responsibility to the public and to the environment to constantly assess how new biotechnologies could potentially impact our world,” said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald E. Ingber<\/a>, M.D., Ph.D.<\/p>\n

“This proactive consensus recommendation — reached in an extraordinary demonstration of the power of scientific collaboration over competition — provides concrete, useful guidelines for safeguarding our shared ecosystem while ensuring that remarkable breakthroughs, such as synthetic gene drives, can be applied to their full potential for the greater good.”<\/p>\n