![]() Gene editing becomes an important tool for biodiversity. With the passionate opposition to GMO crops, much of the public is scared, and most environmentalists are narrowly focused on exploiting and amplifying the fear. And the environmentalists themselves fear losing their message if they say anything positive about genetically modified organisms. This is the Luddite mainstream of environmental activism. The practical stream is embracing gene editing as an important biodiversity tool. The first issue of The CRISPR Journal reports successful uses of gene editing to save and expand threatened wildlife populations. (And elsewhere leading genomics scientists like George Church of Harvard are working on the restoration of extinct species, reversing the damage done by expanding human populations over the last 40,000 years.) Excerpt: Applying GE to Conservation The California-based nonprofit Revive & Restore is one of a handful of conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working on GE-based conservation projects. With the mission of enhancing biodiversity through the genetic rescue of endangered and extinct species, Revive & Restore is working to advance a spectrum of tools for genetic rescue that range from advanced genetic insight (which can determine the range of genetic diversity in a population or identify source populations) to deextinction. The development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a precise GE technique offers numerous possibilities for expanding conservation applications of biotechnology. Revive & Restore has submitted a proposal to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) to research whether GE may be used to facilitate resistance to sylvatic plague in the endangered black-footed ferret. Twice presumed extinct, the ferret was saved through a captive breeding and reintroduction program. However, despite the success of the program, re-established wild populations are vulnerable to sylvatic plague, a nonnative bacterial infection fatal to the black-footed ferret. All ferrets bred in captivity are vaccinated before their release to the wild, but vaccinating wild-born ferrets poses sustainability challenges. Heritable plague resistance could enable long-term sustained recovery. One possible solution would use GE to activate innate alleles that would otherwise require a vaccine to be expressed. A second approach would edit plague-resistant alleles from the domestic ferret (for which plague is not fatal) into the genome of the black-footed ferret. However, without precise GE technology, the transfer of domestic ferret plague-resistant alleles to black-footed ferrets. --------------------------------------------- Who is behind Revise and Restore? Two co-founders. One has been familiar in counter-culture thinking since the 1960s, Stewart Brand, creator of Whole Earth Catalog. The other is Ryan Phelan, pioneer in genomics for biodiversity.
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AuthorWallace Kaufman regularly updates science and News and Views. David Deamer writes an occasional blog, Science2.0. Join the Revolution. Send us your comments. Archives
February 2018
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