Gene drives
A gene drive is an engineered selfish genetic element.
Selfish genetic elements are genes, found in nature, which have the ability to excise themselves and insert themselves into different areas of a host genome.
These genes are thus able to bypass the normal rules of mendelian inheritance, the normal assumption that there is a 50% chance of a parent passing on a particular allele ( gene copy), to their offspring. For selfish genetic elements, there is a much greater chance( up to 100%) of offspring inheritance.
A gene drive is essentially an engineered selfish genetic element, engineered to insert itself into critical regions of a host genome.
Gene drives are often designed with the aim of insertion into critical genomic regions associated with fertility; causing one of the sexes of a target species to be infertile. The fertile sex, is used as a vector to spread the gene drive, giving all of its offspring the gene drive. Over time, the breeding population decreases, eventually dying out, as there will be less and less fertile individuals of a particular sex.
This concept has already been applied with success to invertebrates, such as the malaria carrying anopheles mosquito, but has yet to be successfully applied to vertebrate species, which Syntheteco aims to do.