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A promising tool for dealing with pests and pathogens runs into an old enemy
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Resistance is inevitable
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Gene drives
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Britain faces up to Brexit
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Gene drives
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IT IS life’s lottery, blessing some and cursing others in equal number: the chance of a sexually reproducing organism’s offspring inheriting a particular version of a gene from a particular parent is 50%. Usually. But there are exceptions. Gene drives are stretches of DNA that change those odds to favour one parent’s version of a gene over the other’s. That version will thus tend to spread through a population. If the odds are stacked sufficiently in its favour it can do so fast and, within a few generations, become the only version of the gene in question that ...
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