Bioengineering Species in The Wild: The Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics of Gene Drives

Department of Computational Biology

Featuring Dr. Gili Greenbaum, Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 

Gene drives are genetic constructs that violate the laws of Mendelian inheritance and are therefore able to spread rapidly in populations, even under strong negative selection pressures. The recent success in engineering such constructs, and their potential to suppress harmful species such as disease-vectors and invasive species has generated much excitement. However, alongside this excitement serious concerns have been raised regarding the risk of spillover of the gene drive alleles to non-target populations, and the evolution of resistance. These risks limit our ability to experiment and understand how this technology will behave once deployed into wild populations, and therefore computational and mathematical modeling have a key role in decision making of how, and if, gene drive development should progress. We develop mathematical models that study gene drive behaviors under different ecological settings, incorporating the unique feedback between ecology and evolution in gene drive dynamics. We study these models in order to better understand the potentials and risks of gene drives, to guide gene drive design towards safer constructs, and to identify measures for mitigating some of the risks of gene drive deployments. 

Seminar Host: Dr. Jaehee Kim