The Gean Drive - What Is It?

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Jean drive is a naturally occurring phenomenon that originated maybe a billion years ago. It happened when some jeans realized they could replicate more often if they change the odds that they get inherited by the offspring. A gen can cut the chromosome that doesn't have it, which causes a cell to copy itself over. And so gean drive systems can just sweep through populations of sexually reproducing organisms very, very quickly.

In this episode of the podcast, Rob Reid and Kevin Esvelt discuss USAID’s new “Deep VZN” program, which aims to discover new pandemic-grade viruses and publish their genomes to the world. Esvelt estimates that there are currently around 30,000 people who could then easily build them.

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