Could science have the answer to pest control? GM rats
IT is a far more sophisticated solution than setting a trap or laying out poison-laced cheese.
Scientists say Britain’s pest problem may soon be solved – by releasing genetically engineered rats.
Edinburgh University says within two years rats could be made infertile by tweaking their genes, or made to have only male offspring.
These laboratory rodents, released into the wild to pass on their mutant genes, could cut rat populations in cities such as London, where the urban myth goes that residents are never more than 6ft away from a rat.
GM mosquitoes are already being created in Australia to protect people from the malaria carried by the deadly insects. However the British scientists will be the first to try the technique out on mammals.
Gus McFarlane, co-author of a study on the solution, said: ‘There are obvious benefits of this gene drive strategy compared to current control measures that are really quite brutal – shooting, poisoning, trapping, kind of “bash over the head” techniques.
‘It is more humane to cause a population decline with minimal animal suffering. It is species-specific, as you are only targeting the target species you plan to, and also potentially more cost-effective.’
Scientists say the creatures could be stopped from breeding using CRISPR/Cas 9 – a technique which works like ‘molecular scissors’ to snip away DNA. This technique works to disrupt a fertility gene in rats, to make females infertile. It can also skew the sex ratio which makes some baby rats male with an XY pair of chromosomes and some female with an XX pair.
By ‘shredding’ the X chromosome, scientists have made almost 95 per cent of mosquito offspring male – cutting birth rates massively because there are not enough females to breed.
Edinburgh University’s Roslin Institute hopes to start trialling both techniques in a ‘contained and controlled’ rodent lab within two years.
Professor Bruce Whitelaw, principal investigator at Roslin Institute,
‘Minimal animal suffering’
where Dolly the sheep was cloned, said: ‘We have the makings of a technology that could reduce or eliminate a pest population in a humane and species-specific manner.
‘We need more research to better understand the risks, and whether these can be mitigated, but we believe the potential benefits merit further investigation.’
The genetically modified rats would pass on their infertility or likelihood to have male offspring to the next generation, scientists believe. It means a mutant gene could spread throughout an entire population within as few as ten generations.
The researchers stress additional research to investigate the potential risks associated with gene drive technology would have to be carried out before the approach could ever be applied in the real world.