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0:00
Hello. I'm Jackson Champer,
a scientist at Peking University
and I'd like to tell you
a little bit about the
many different types
of gene drives available.
My hope is that even
though we won't cover
every single possible
type of gene drive
in this talk that
after listening,
you'll get a better idea of
many different possibilities
for gene drive
and what some of the
unique advantages
of the different types
of gene drives are.
0:29
First of all, what
is a gene drive?
A gene drive is
an engineered genetic
construct that can be
placed into an individual
making it a transgenic
gene drive individual.
We can then take some of
these individuals with
gene drive and release it
into a wild-type population.
Over time, the gene
drive is then able
to bias its inheritance
and increase in
frequency in the
population until
eventually potentially
all the individuals
in that population will
have the gene drive.
This makes it a potentially very
powerful tool for manipulating
wild populations with
only a very small effort
needed, just the release
of a few individuals.
1:15
Here's an example showing
normal Mendelian inheritance.
Here your orange allele
is a heterozygote.
That means this individual has
one special allele and one
normal wild-type allele.
Half of the offspring then
will receive this
normal allele in
each generation and that
means if there's
no fitness costs,
this normal allele is
expected to stay at
the same frequency
in the population.
This gene drive
example shows what
might happen if you have
a powerful gene drive.
This red allele here even
though it's a heterozygote,
this red allele actually
is passed on to all of
the offspring and because
that happens in
every generation,
your gene drive is able to very
rapidly increase in frequency.
