I wish I had a better source, but in this video, a journalist says that a well-equipped high schooler could do it. The information needed seems to be freely available online, but I don’t know enough biology to be able to tell for sure. I think it is unknown whether it would spread to the whole population given a single release, though.
If you want it to happen and can’t do it yourself nor pay someone else to do it, the best strategy might be to pay someone to translate the relevant papers into instructions that a regular smart person can follow and then publish them online. After making sure to the best of your capabilities (i.e. asking experts the right questions) that it actually is a good idea, that is.
I strongly vote against increasing the number of people able to unilaterally decide that an arbitrary species should be extinct. I think there are already many thousands of such people, and I don’t want there to be millions.
(I’m less strongly opposed if the instruction manual were somehow specific to mosquitoes and completely useless for any other plant or animal.)
So in order to build a gene drive, you’d need to build the DNA construct (pretty easy in a garage), introduce it into mosquitoes (not easy at all in a garage), and then breed enough to release (I’m not sure how easy in a garage, but probably not very easy).
Depending on the country you live in, you may be able to order GE organisms from specialist companies or universities, with higher likelihood of success if you do so on behalf of a company/university.
Is the tech to create a gene drive and spread it—something a hypothetical determined person can do from their garage ?
I wish I had a better source, but in this video, a journalist says that a well-equipped high schooler could do it. The information needed seems to be freely available online, but I don’t know enough biology to be able to tell for sure. I think it is unknown whether it would spread to the whole population given a single release, though.
If you want it to happen and can’t do it yourself nor pay someone else to do it, the best strategy might be to pay someone to translate the relevant papers into instructions that a regular smart person can follow and then publish them online. After making sure to the best of your capabilities (i.e. asking experts the right questions) that it actually is a good idea, that is.
RE creating an instruction manual:
I strongly vote against increasing the number of people able to unilaterally decide that an arbitrary species should be extinct. I think there are already many thousands of such people, and I don’t want there to be millions.
(I’m less strongly opposed if the instruction manual were somehow specific to mosquitoes and completely useless for any other plant or animal.)
I guess it might be possible to repurpose the manual, but making mosquito species extinct isn’t the only possible method, e.g. https://bioengineeringcommunity.nature.com/posts/gene-drive-rescue-system-for-population-modification-of-a-malaria-mosquito .
Really sounds like learning some biology might be rather empowering lol. Noted.
Building the DNA would be easy, the harder part would be setting up a mosquito breeding operation.
Unless you do it in Africa and can easily catch mosquitoes from the wild.
I mean, that’s probably the case, since they asked whether they could spread them from their garage.
So in order to build a gene drive, you’d need to build the DNA construct (pretty easy in a garage), introduce it into mosquitoes (not easy at all in a garage), and then breed enough to release (I’m not sure how easy in a garage, but probably not very easy).
Depending on the country you live in, you may be able to order GE organisms from specialist companies or universities, with higher likelihood of success if you do so on behalf of a company/university.