New findings from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research uncover critical insights about how a dangerous selfish gene—considered to be a parasitic portion of DNA—functions and survives. Understanding this dynamic is a valuable resource for the broader community studying meiotic drive systems.  

A new study published in PLoS Genetics on Dec. 7, 2022, reveals how a selfish gene in yeast uses a poison-antidote strategy that enables its function and likely has facilitated its long-term evolutionary success. This strategy is an important addition for scientists studying similar systems, including teams that are designing synthetic drive systems for pathogenic pest control. Collective and collaborative advancement on the understanding drive may one day lead to the eradication of pest populations that harm crops or even humans in the case of vector-borne diseases.   

“It’s quite dangerous for a genome to encode a protein that has the capacity to kill the organism,” said Stowers Associate Investigator Sara H Zanders, Ph.D. “However, understanding the biology of these selfish elements could help us build synthetic drivers to modify natural populations.”