PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - James E. DiCarlo
AU  - Alejandro Chavez
AU  - Sven L. Dietz
AU  - Kevin M. Esvelt
AU  - George M. Church
TI  - RNA-guided gene drives can efficiently bias inheritance in wild yeast
AID  - 10.1101/013896
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 013896
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/01/16/013896.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/01/16/013896.full
AB  - Inheritance-biasing elements known as “gene drives” may be capable of spreading genomic alterations made in laboratory organisms through wild populations. We previously considered the potential for RNA-guided gene drives based on the versatile CRISPR/ Cas9 genome editing system to serve as a general method of altering populations1. Here we report molecularly contained gene drive constructs in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that are typically copied at rates above 99% when mated to wild yeast. We successfully targeted both non-essential and essential genes and showed that the inheritance of an unrelated “cargo” gene could be biased by an adjacent drive. Our results demonstrate that RNA-guided gene drives are capable of efficiently biasing inheritance when mated to wild-type organisms over successive generations.