Gene Drive Insects

I worked with a highly interdisciplinary group of graduate students during my PhD as a member of the NC State University's NSF-IGERT grant, Genetic Engineering & Society: The Case of Transgenic Pests. Our cohort was focused on the potential use of transgenic pests in agriculture. We worked together over the course of three years to consider the follow questions about the potential use of gene drive technology in insect pests of agriculture: Can we? Should we? If we should, how do we? I credit this diverse group for helping me to become a deeper and more critical thinker. After completing field work in Mexico and participating in workshops and discussion groups we published two papers (links below) that represent our collective ideas.

• Baltzegar, J., J. Cavin Barnes, J. E. Elsensohn, N. Gutzmann, M. S. Jones, S. King, and J. Sudweeks. 2018. Anticipating Complexity in the Deployment of Gene Drive Insects in Agriculture. Journal of Responsible Innovation. 5(sup1): S81-S97. doi: 10.10180/23299460.2017.1407910. 

• Gutzmann, N., J. Elsensohn, J. Barnes, J. Baltzegar, M. Jones, and J. Sudweeks. 2017. CRISPR-based gene drive in agriculture will face technical and governance challenges. EMBO Reports 18(9): 1479-1480. doi: 10.15252/embr.201744661.