Jackson Champer is a faculty member at the School
of Life Sciences at Peking University and the Center for Life
Sciences. Jackson is also a member of the Center for Bioinformatics.
Gene drive alleles can bias their inheritance to rapidly spread through a population. They can modify the
population with a desired trait or even directly suppress the population. The most promising application for gene drives
is combating vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue. "Cargos" that could be carried by gene drives to prevent
transmission of these diseases already exist. Gene drives could also be used for conservation by removing invasive species
or modifying endangered species to protect them. However, substantial challenges must be overcome to develop effective drives.
A primary obstacle to successful gene drive is the formation of resistance alleles by the drive itself. In most organisms,
obtaining high efficiency drives is also difficult. Another challenge for gene drives is to spread in only a specific target population,
rather than spreading uncontrollably. This could be necessary for a variety of reasons such as sociopolitical considerations or the need
to suppress an invasive species only outside its native range. To address these issues, the Champer lab tests gene drive concepts and
designs in the model organism,
Drosophila melanogaster. There is also research toward generating “release candidates” in
mosquitoes and other organisms.
A portion of the Champer lab’s research involves computational modeling of gene
drives to determine how well they may actually perform in natural populations. Suppression drive and confined drive
systems have
particularly interesting properties in spatially continuous environments . Modeling is also used to
assess drive variants and performance models prior to conducting experiments, which are then used to further refine
quantitative mechanistic models.
Enquiries are welcome. Contact Jackson Champer at jchamper@pku.edu.cn.