07/October/21

 

Claims of genome editing precision or specificity have been repeatedly challenged by the accumulation of studies showing unintended effects, such as ‘off-target’ modification of additional regions of the genome to the ‘target site’ chosen by the developers. But unintended effects at the target site have received much less attention. A new report by GeneWatch UK looks at unintended on-target effects, why they are a problem, and what implications they have for the safety and development of gene-edited GMOs. GeneWatch UK via GMWatch

 

 

Researchers have shown that a bacterium can successfully suppress populations of the invasive, disease-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito that is responsible for spreading dengue, yellow fever and Zika. The trial involved releasing three million male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Northern Queensland, sterilised with a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia, across three trial sites. The sterile male insects search out and mate with wild females, preventing the production of offspring. There are risks to this approach, though it does not involve GM mosquitoes or gene drives, two technologies that are being promoted as solutions to mosquito-borne diseases, despite the evidence of failure. And there are ways of using Wolbachia only to disrupt the mosquitoes’ ability to transmit viruses, rather than to eliminate the mosquitoes themselves. GMWatch

 

 

Scientists from Wuhan and the US were planning to create new coronaviruses that did not exist in nature by combining the genetic codes of other viruses, proposals show. Documents of a grant application submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), leaked last month, reveal that the international team of scientists planned to mix genetic data of closely related strains and grow new viruses. A genetics expert working with the World Health Organisation (WHO), who uncovered the plan after studying the proposals, and who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said that if Sars-CoV-2 had been produced in this way, it would explain why a close match has never been found in nature. The proposal was submitted by the British zoologist Peter Daszak on behalf of a consortium which included Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the University of North Carolina and Duke NUS in Singapore. The Telegraph