• Coopr8@kbin.earth
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    7 days ago

    Any Molecular biologists out there care to comment on whether the initial test releases that were done should eventually snowball anyway, or if they put in some kind of automatic generational die-off in the sequences?

    My understanding of the Gene Drive was that it acted like a sort of super-dominant alele, with all subsequent progeny expressing the new trait. Not sure how that can be out back in the bottle after it gets out, just a matter of the number of generations it will take to go fully up the hockey stick.

    • Sludgehammer@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      7 days ago

      Well as the article mentioned they haven’t gotten to the gene drive part yet, they were testing a mosquito that would masculinize female mosquitos and would only be passed down through regular Mendelian inheritance.

      • Coopr8@kbin.earth
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 days ago

        aha, yes I am guilty I only read the first half of the article. That makes a lot of sense.