Genetically Modified Pest-control

Nowadays, pests are getting genetically resistant to the chemicals we used to get rid of them. These chemicals are used to control the over population of insects and animals that are consider a threat in our community such as cockroaches, rats, mice and mosquitoes. This resistance is really serious, imagine hundreds of rats in your house and not being able to kill them with pesticides. The damage to infrastructure, along with the health risks, would be tremendous.

This is why scientists are attempting to create genetic pest-control measure against rodents. Using CRISPR/CAS9, a technology mentioned previously in this blog.

Kimberly Cooper, a developmental geneticist at the University of California, San Diego claimed: “What we’ve done is engineered a gene that can be inherited more frequently than it would be by normal Mendelian inheritance”. Other scientists said that this method is ‘cheating Mendel’.
Hopefully this method will be researched further in order to get it closer to market. There are still concerns on gene editing technology and its impact, time will tell if it is ready for commercial applications like this one.


References:
Saey, T. H. (2019, January 23). A CRISPR gene drive for mice is one step closer to reality. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://www.sciencenews.org/article/crispr-gene-drive-mice-pest-control-one-step-closer-reality