RNA-guided gene drives can efficiently and reversibly bias inheritance in wild yeast

James E DiCarlo; Alejandro Chavez; Sven L Dietz; Kevin M Esvelt; George M Church

doi:10.1101/013896

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bioRxiv · 10.1101/013896

RNA-guided gene drives can efficiently and reversibly bias inheritance in wild yeast

James E DiCarlo·Alejandro Chavez·Sven L Dietz·Kevin M Esvelt·George M Church

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Abstract

Inheritance-biasing \"gene drives\" may be capable of spreading genomic alterations made in laboratory organisms through wild populations. We previously considered the potential for RNA-guided gene drives based on the versatile CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system to serve as a general method of altering populations1. Here we report molecularly contained gene drive constructs in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that are typically copied at rates above 99% when mated to wild yeast. We successfully targeted both non-essential and essential genes, showed that the inheritance of an unrelated \"cargo\" gene could be biased by an adjacent drive, and constructed a drive capable of overwriting and reversing changes made by a previous drive. Our results demonstrate that RNA-guided gene drives are capable of efficiently biasing inheritance when mated to wild-type organisms over successive generations.

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James E DiCarlo, Alejandro Chavez, Sven L Dietz, Kevin M Esvelt, George M Church. 2015-01-16. RNA-guided gene drives can efficiently and reversibly bias inheritance in wild yeast. https://doi.org/10.1101/013896

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