A roadmap for gene drives: using institutional analysis and development to frame research needs and governance in a systems context

ABSTRACT

The deployment of gene drives is emerging as an alternative for protecting endangered species, controlling agricultural pests, and reducing vector-borne diseases. This paper reports on a workshop held in February 2016 to explore the complex intersection of political, economic, ethical, and ecological risk issues associated with gene drives. Workshop participants were encouraged to use systems thinking and mapping to describe the connections among social, policy, economic, and ecological variables as they intersect within governance systems. In this paper, we analyze the workshop transcripts and maps using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to categorize variables associated with gene drive governance and account for the complexities of socio-ecological systems. We discuss how the IAD framework can be used in the future to test hypotheses about how features of governance systems might lead to certain outcomes and inform the design of research programs, public engagement, and anticipatory governance of gene drives.

KEYWORDS:

• Gene drive
• governance
• risk
• systems
• IAD
• genetic engineering

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Sharon Stauffer, Project Manager at GES-NCSU for her dedication to making the workshop happen, as well as Maurizo Lewis-Streit, Communications Assistant at GES-NCSU, Alison Wynn, former Deputy Director of GES-NCSU, and Jayce Sudweeks, PhD student in Public Administration and GES for additional assistance and planning. The authors appreciate the valuable input of the workshop participants (Appendix), including the ones who co-authored papers for this volume; and the NSF-IGERT students from NCSU’s Genetic Pest Management graduate program for moderating and taking notes during the small-group exercises.

Notes on contributors

J. Kuzma is the Goodnight-NC GlaxoSmithKline Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs, and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center, at North Carolina State University USA. She has over 100 scholarly publications on emerging technologies, risk analysis, policy systems, and governance. Kuzma has served on several national and international advisory boards, including the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Technology, Values, and Policy; the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on Preparing for Future Biotechnology; and the UN WHO-FAO Expert Group for Agrifood Nanotechnologies.

F. Gould works in the area of ecology and evolutionary biology. An elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Gould conducts empirical and theoretical studies of insect pests to improve food production and human and environmental health. He chaired the NASEM ground-breaking study on Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects, which provides a comprehensive evaluation of genetically engineered crops.

Z. Brown is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. His Ph.D. training (from Duke University's School of the Environment) is in Environmental and Resource Economics. Broadly, his research and teaching are in the field of ‘bioeconomics’, analyzing the dynamic interactions between human behavior and complex environmental and ecological systems, using experimental methods, observational data, mathematical models and theory.

J. Collins is Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment at Arizona State University. He is an evolutionary ecologist who studies host-pathogen biology and its relationship to the decline of species, at times to extinction. He served as Director of the Population Biology and Physiological Ecology program (from 1985 to 1986) and Assistant Director for Biological Sciences (from 2005 to 2009) at NSF.

J. Delborne joined the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University in 2013. His research draws on the interdisciplinary field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), with a focus on emerging technologies, governance, and public engagement. He served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's committee that produced the report, Gene Drives on the Horizon (2016).

E. Frow is an assistant professor with a joint appointment at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Biological & Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on standards and governance in contemporary life sciences, with a particular focus on synthetic biology.

K. Esvelt is director of the Sculpting Evolution group, which invents new ways to study and influence the evolution of ecosystems. By carefully developing and testing these methods with openness and humility, the group seeks to address difficult ecological problems for the benefit of humanity and the natural world.

D. Guston is professor and founding director of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at ASU, where he is also Co-Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. His work on the democratic and anticipatory governance of emerging technologies is widely cited and incorporated into research and policy programs.

C. Leitschuh is a doctoral candidate in Zoology and a member of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center, both at N.C. State University. She studies how rearing environment affects mouse anxiety-related and exploratory behavior, in the context of eradication of invasive mice from islands. She also is interested in facilitating communication between disparate scientific disciplines and between researchers and the public.

K. Oye is Professor of Political Science and Data Systems and Society at MIT. As Director of the Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET), his research has focused on adaptive regulation of benefits and risks of technologies. His recent papers on synthetic biology include: “Revisit NIH Biosafety Guidelines” (Science 2017); “Regulating Gene Drives” (Science 2014); “Regulate Home Brew Opiates” (Nature 2015).

S. Stauffer served as the Project Manager on the NSF Gene Drives Grant and has been with the GES Center since the fall of 2013, where she currently is the Program Specialist. She hails from New York State where prior to her move to North Carolina, she was an Administrator for a non-profit organization.

ORCID

Z. Brown http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1301-4420

J. Delborne http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6436-782X

Additional information

Funding

The workshop was funded by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, National Science Foundation–Science in Society Program [grant number 1533990] with additional co-funding by the Genetic Engineering and Society Center (GES) at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. The views, however, are those of the authors and not these institutions.