Gene Drive Population Dynamics


Gene drives are genetic constructs that can bias transmission of desired alleles to progeny, allowing these alleles to rapidly increase in frequency even when they are negatively selected. With recent innovation in CRISPR/Cas9-based methods, gene drives have attracted considerable attention for their potential applications for suppressing disease vectors, agricultural pests, or invasive species. However, this revolutionary technology raises serious concerns about the potential unintentional spillover of gene drives from the target population to non-target populations or species, and the potential evolution of resistance to gene drive conversion represents a significant problem.

We study gene drive eco-evolutionary dynamics through mathematical modeling incorporating the interactions between the ecological and evolutionary effects of gene drives to aid not only in designing gene drive configurations and deployment strategies but also in advancing our understanding of how ecology, evolution, and population history interact to shape genomic signatures, and how these interactions in turn influence the viability of populations.

Collaborators