At the Partnership for Growth biotechnology showcase this week, SciBac Inc. of California made a very compelling pitch.

Branded with the tagline “always trust your gut,” SciBac is creating hybrid microorganisms to treat so-called superbugs and deadly infections in people using a patented, non-GMO method they term DRIVE (Directed Recombination by In Vitro Evolution) technology. It’s a fascinating idea with positive medical implications, but one of the judges took clear issue with the nomenclature. 

“Why are you calling your technology DRIVE — since gene driving is the scariest technology ever?” he asked, catching me — and, I think, the presenter — off guard. “Can I suggest that you not associate yourself with the idea of gene driving? … It’s the technology that kills the world, right?”

Whoa. What’s gene driving, and why is it so dangerous? I hopped over to Google for a quick education, and found myself reading a 2017 New York Times piece on the gene-editing technology that could significantly alter the course of invasive, and threatened, species.

For instance, the short-tailed weasel.

The idea was pitched in 2013 by Harvard University researcher Kevin Esvelt and colleagues: Use a new gene-editing technology, called Crispr, to save endangered wildlife from extinction by implanting a fertility-reducing gene in invasive animals — a gene drive. 

Those genetically altered animals (like the aforementioned weasel, which nearly wiped native bird populations out in New Zealand) would be released back into their adopted territory, and the fertility-reducing gene would spread through the population. Essentially, the organisms would begin gene-editing through reproduction. The idea was initially appealing, and the technology could theoretically be applied to manage diseases, including a project that seeks to wipe out malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

None of this sounds like dangerous stuff, until Esvelt and his team published a model that examined what could happen when Crispr-altered organisms are released back into the wild. 

Through reproduction, those altered genes might spread to an ecosystem where the species isn’t invasive, but key — and in the case of a fertility-reducing gene in weasels, a native weasel population might produce fewer and fewer young, until the population collapses.

“I feel like I’ve blown it,” Esvelt told the New York Times after the study was released.

There may still be a place in the world for this technology, he said, but right now, real-world experiments are likely too risky to pursue — just in case those genes find a way to a population they don’t belong in.