Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Daisy quorum drives for the genetic restoration of wild populations

John Min, View ORCID ProfileCharleston Noble, View ORCID ProfileDevora Najjar, View ORCID ProfileKevin M. Esvelt
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/115618
John Min
1MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
2Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
3Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Charleston Noble
3Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
4Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Charleston Noble
Devora Najjar
1MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Devora Najjar
Kevin M. Esvelt
1MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Kevin M. Esvelt
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

An ideal gene drive system to alter wild populations would 1) exclusively affect organisms within the political boundaries of consenting communities, and 2) be capable of restoring any engineered population to its original genetic state. Here we describe ‘daisy quorum’ drive systems that meet these criteria by combining daisy drive with underdominance. A daisy quorum drive system is predicted to spread through a population until all of its daisy elements have been lost, at which point its fitness becomes frequency-dependent: mostly altered populations become fixed for the desired change, while engineered genes at low frequency are swiftly eliminated by natural selection. The result is an engineered population surrounded by wild-type organisms with limited mixing at the boundary. Releasing large numbers of wild-type organisms or a few bearing a population suppression element can reduce the engineered population below the quorum, triggering elimination of all engineered sequences. In principle, the technology can restore any drive-amenable population carrying engineered genes to wild-type genetics. Daisy quorum systems may enable efficient, community-supported, and genetically reversible ecological engineering.

Summary Local communities should be able to control their own environments without forcing those choices on others. Ideally, each community could reversibly alter local wild organisms in ways that cannot spread beyond their own boundaries, and any engineered population could be restored to its original genetic state. We've invented a 'daisy quorum' drive system that appears to meet these criteria.

“Daisy” refers to a daisy drive, which typically uses a daisy-chain of linked genes to spread a change through a local population while losing links every generation until it stops spreading. “Quorum” reflects the system's ability to “vote” on whether a local population should be altered or not: once all daisy elements are lost, it favors replication by the altered version or the original depending on which is more abundant in the local area. Put together, they result in a change that first spreads through a local population, then either becomes locally prevalent is eliminating, inhibiting mixing at the boundary. All organisms in the target population are altered, but changes are unable to spread much beyond that area due to being greatly outnumbered by wild-type organisms and consequently less able to replicate.

We haven't yet performed any experiments involving daisy quorum systems. Rather, we’re describing what we intend to do, including the safeguards we will use and our assessment of risks, in the hope that others will evaluate our plans and tell us if there's anything wrong that we missed. We hope that all researchers working on gene drive systems - and other technologies that could impact the shared environment - will similarly pre-register their plans. Sharing plans can reduce needless duplication, accelerate progress, and make the proposed work safer for everyone.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted March 10, 2017.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Daisy quorum drives for the genetic restoration of wild populations
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Daisy quorum drives for the genetic restoration of wild populations
John Min, Charleston Noble, Devora Najjar, Kevin M. Esvelt
bioRxiv 115618; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/115618
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Daisy quorum drives for the genetic restoration of wild populations
John Min, Charleston Noble, Devora Najjar, Kevin M. Esvelt
bioRxiv 115618; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/115618

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Synthetic Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4239)
  • Biochemistry (9170)
  • Bioengineering (6804)
  • Bioinformatics (24062)
  • Biophysics (12154)
  • Cancer Biology (9564)
  • Cell Biology (13824)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7656)
  • Ecology (11736)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15540)
  • Genetics (10670)
  • Genomics (14358)
  • Immunology (9509)
  • Microbiology (22901)
  • Molecular Biology (9129)
  • Neuroscience (49107)
  • Paleontology (357)
  • Pathology (1487)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2581)
  • Physiology (3851)
  • Plant Biology (8351)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1473)
  • Synthetic Biology (2301)
  • Systems Biology (6205)
  • Zoology (1302)