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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Microbiol. 2018 Aug 27;4(1):20–34. doi: 10.1038/s41564-018-0214-7

Fig. 4 |. Gene drives bias inheritance to ensure their propagation.

Fig. 4 |

In normal Mendelian inheritance (left), a non-driving transgene (purple) that is on one chromosome (highlighted yellow) will be inherited by 50% of the offspring. Outcrossing to natural wild-type populations will halve the frequency of the transgene in the population with every generation. A gene drive transgene (right) biases transmission to over 50% of its offspring. Through a self-driven copying mechanism within the germline of heterozygotes, a gene drive transgene (purple) on one chromosome (highlighted yellow) will be copied to the other by cutting the other chromosome at the location of the insertion, and the cell uses the original chromosome containing the gene drive transgene as a template for repair by homology-directed repair. All the offspring inherit a copy of the gene drive transgene. Outcrossing to natural wild-type populations will cause spread of the gene drive transgene throughout the population.