A moratorium on gene drive?
The UN may ban experiments with "self-replicating" genes
UN member states may vote this week to impose a "temporary ban" on the development of genome editing technologies that allow the rapid spread of certain gene variations in large animal populations. This is reported by the news service of the journal Nature (Ban on ‘gene drives’ is back on the UN's agenda – worrying scientists).
"A total ban on all such experiments will be a great threat to science, since no one has yet developed a clear definition of what "self-reproducing" genes are. This is a very rude and absolutely erroneous approach," said Austin Burt from Imperial College London (UK).
The Gene Factory
The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 and other new-generation DNA editors made scientists think about whether they could be used to distribute the "necessary" versions of genes very quickly and reliably across populations of various living beings.
The fact is that these systems are inserted into the genomes of unicellular creatures or even multicellular animals in such a way that they will begin to delete all the "wrong" copies of genes and replace them with the "right" DNA sequences in all its cells.
As a result, the offspring of genetically modified and "normal" living beings will always be carriers of the "correct" copy of the gene, and not only in half of the cases, as Mendel's laws say. Thanks to this, the "necessary" versions of genes will spread throughout the population in several generations, without requiring human intervention in the life of animals.
This can be used for a variety of purposes – the destruction of invasive animal species, as well as mosquitoes and midges that spread parasites, the protection of livestock or endangered species from diseases or viruses, as well as a number of other purposes. Many scientists and politicians are extremely negative about this idea, as they believe that such "self-reproducing" genes cannot be controlled.
The next meeting of the parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will begin in Egypt this week. According to Nature, the main topic of their discussions will be the possible introduction of a "temporary ban" on such experiments.
Bart, one of the leading experts in this field and the head of the Target Malaria project, aimed at using "self-propagating" genes to destroy malaria carriers, as well as four hundred other geneticists sharply condemned this initiative in an open letter. It was published on the website Gene Drive Network, specially created for this purpose.
The price of progress
"All the progress that humanity has made over the last century has been associated with scientific discoveries. Science cannot solve all the problems at once, but it gives us the tools and knowledge we need to find answers to these questions in the future. For example, the development of vaccines has helped save millions of lives and reduce infant mortality by 74%. It is not necessary to ban one of the scientific instruments before we evaluate all its pros and cons," the scientists said.
Bart and his like-minded people, as Nature reports, plan to attend this meeting and present their point of view on how such technologies should be evaluated and in what they should be limited. Scientists hope they will be able to convince politicians not to impose a "total ban" on all such studies.
This is far from the first attempt to introduce such a moratorium – the Convention participants have been discussing such a possibility for four years, and two years ago the opponents of "self-propagating" genes already brought this issue up for discussion.
The probability of this, as representatives of the scientific council of the Convention assess the situation, is quite small, which is due not to the absence of a large number of supporters of the moratorium, but to the way the UN is organized. The fact is that any decisions in almost all UN bodies require full consensus, the consent of all participating countries of such organizations.
In this case, we can expect that China, Australia, Japan and some other countries will not support the idea of banning these studies, since they have already invested large resources in the study of "self-reproducing" genes.
Regardless of the results of the vote, scientists hope that the meeting will allow them to convince politicians to study in more detail all the potential pros and cons of this technology, and only then decide whether to impose a moratorium or not.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru