Aussie scientists call for discussion on gene-editing technology

MELBOURNE: The power of gene- editing technology is tipped to revolutionise science and the Australian Academy of Science yesterday released a report calling for a national discussion around how to best manage it.

In the next three to five years, scient ists using the latest synthetic gene drive technology could be able to change the population of animal and plant species dramatically, ABC News reported.

Professor Ary Hoffman from the University of Melbourne said it could mean eliminating the mosquito, which carries malaria or reducing the population of cane toads in Australia.

“They allow particular genes to be transmitted at a very high frequency from one generation to the next, potentially twice as fast than would normally occur,” Hoffman said.

He is also a member of the Australian Academy of Science and contributed to its discussion paper ‘ Synthetic Gene Drives in Australia: Implications of Emerging Technologies’.

He said while the concept of gene drives is not new, the latest technology means organisms and species can now be edited much more efficiently and accurately than ever before.

“That’s the power of the new approach. The new technology allows you to be picky about which genes you want to push through. So you can push through genes that are involved in suppressing the transmission of disease vector,” Hoffman said.

“You can also push genes that would skew sex ratio and therefore have an impact of the size of a population.”

He said potential benefits of the technology span public health, the environment and the agricultural sector.

“You might be able to construct a mosquito which no longer transmits malaria. You can then attach a gene drive to that particular gene that is responsible for preventing malaria transmission, that gene drive will then push a particular system through to the population and effectively you end up with a transformed mosquito population,” he said.

The technology could also allow scientists to suppress the population of invasive insects and mammals and help control agricultural pests, which have become increasingly resistant to chemicals.

“So if you could ensure that a gene is driven through a population that recreates susceptibility to those chemicals, and all of a sudden the chemicals that have been no longer effective because of resistance, could then become a useful control measure again,” Hoffman said.