Quality‑control Genes Enable Gene Drive

Researchers found that a sperm quality‑control gene (Overdrive/Ovd) in fruit flies can be hijacked by selfish chromosomes to eliminate rival sperm, biasing which alleles are transmitted. This reveals a specific molecular route for natural segregation distortion and shows that so‑called quality‑control pathways can be repurposed to produce drive‑like inheritance. — If quality‑control pathways can be co‑opted to bias inheritance, that changes how regulators and biosecurity planners should assess the risks and feasibility of engineered gene drives and single‑locus interventions.