RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 RNA-guided gene drives can efficiently and reversibly bias inheritance in wild yeast
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 013896
DO 10.1101/013896
A1 James E. DiCarlo
A1 Alejandro Chavez
A1 Sven L. Dietz
A1 Kevin M. Esvelt
A1 George M. Church
YR 2015
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/03/19/013896.abstract
AB Inheritance-biasing “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, showed that the inheritance of an unrelated “cargo” gene could be biased by an adjacent drive, and constructed a drive capable of overwriting and reversing changes made by a previous drive. Our results demonstrate that RNA-guided gene drives are capable of efficiently biasing inheritance when mated to wild-type organisms over successive generations.