Genetic tool can doom endangered species

PARIS: For some, a new cuttingedge technology called gene drive is the silver bullet able to wipe out invasive species decimating island wildlife, and eradicate the malaria-bearing mosquitos that killed nearly half a million people last year, mostly in Africa.

Others fear that the genetic engineering process is a one-way ticket to ecological mayhem, or suspect health and conservation aims are masking industrial and military objectives.

Advocates and critics square off in Montreal this week in an obscure working group under the Convention on Biological Diversity, a 1992 UN treaty forged as a bulkhead against the

Reducing populations of environmentally and economically destructive invasive species was among the many ‘compelling opportunities’ offered by the technology.

gathering pace of extinction on our planet.

The Ad-Hoc Technical Experts Committee on synthetic biology, known as AHTEG, is tasked with understanding science’s increasingly powerful ability to manipulate genomes, and reporting back to the Convention’s 195 member states.

That both sides of the gene drive debate may have valid arguments shows just how little is still known about this technology, or what might happen if it is ever released into the natural world.

One side, however, clearly has more resources. A handful of backers – including the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – have poured several hundred million dollars into gene drive research over the last two years.

Canada-based consulting fi rm Emerging Ag said the Gates Foundation paid it US$ 1.6 million ( US7 million) this summer to push back against a moratorium on research called for last December by more than 100 NGOs.

“The goal was to reach out to policy makers,” Isabelle Cloche, vice president for strategy at Emerging Ag, told AFP.

Gene drive technology works by forcing evolution’s hand, ensuring that an engineered trait is passed down to a higher proportion of offspring – across many generations – than would have occurred naturally.

Imagine that the trait in question is being male.

In a rapidly reproducing species, the result will be a cascading reduction in population – or even extinction.

Gene drive was fi rst identified as a potential saviour for animals decimated by non-native species – such as rodents and mosquitoes – in a 2014 study led by MIT scientist Kevin Esvelt.

“Reducing populations of environmentally and economically destructive invasive species” was among the many “compelling opportunities” offered by the technology, he and colleagues wrote at the time.

Today, Esvelt says he was mistaken to raise the hopes of conservationists, and that unbridled gene drive is too dangerous to be used for that purpose.

“You should never build and release a self-propagating drive system – or really any kind of system – that is capable of defi nitely spreading beyond the target population,” he told AFP.

“And that rules out invasive species control, because there is always a native population somewhere.”

But Esvelt does not exclude more limited forms of gene drive, nor other targets, notably the eradication of mosquito-borne disease in humans.

In that case, he points out, “your target population is every mosquito of that species”. — AFP

Kevin Esvelt, MIT scientist