273W Poster - Population Genetics
Wednesday June 08, 9:15 PM - 10:00 PM

Authors:
Benjamin Camm ^1,2; Alexandre Fournier-Level ¹

Affiliations:
1) University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia; 2) Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Victoria, Australia

Keywords:
Theory & Method Development

Gene drives are powerful genetic tools that have the potential to affect entire species. It is vital to design self-limiting gene drives to minimise the chance of unintentional spread, or persistence. Here, we use a genomically-informed gene drive model to demonstrate how natural genetic variation between populations can be exploited to design homing gene drives that are spatially or temporally limited.
In weedy Lolium rigidum (Annual Ryegrass) populations from South-Eastern Australia, we found 111 loci with variation that could be exploited to create a localised gene drive. Of these, 17 had more than one polymorphism that met our pairwise allele frequency difference threshold between three populations. The locus with the strongest pairwise allele difference between the three populations was selected to be used in the model. A multi-fasta for that locus was fed into our discrete non-overlapping model where the allele frequencies per population and their respective conversion efficiencies were derived. A slight difference in allele frequency between populations allowed control of the gene drive. The weighted average conversion efficiency of the target population was 0.556, with the off-target populations having 0.535 and 0.417. The model showed that the drive was able to fixate in the target population (>0.997) while in the off-target populations, the drive peaked at frequencies of 0.315 and 0.0502.
A localised gene drive simulation was achieved by using sequence information to infer the allele frequencies and conversion efficiencies. This modelling allows for population specific gene drive modelling, building confidence in the predicted outcomes.