Opinion: A community-guided genome editing project can fight Lyme disease

The epidemic of Lyme disease is an ecological problem of our own making: We have inadvertently altered our environment to maximize the number of infected ticks. The question today is whether we should consider altering the genomes of wild animals to undo that mistake.

See related opinion: Gene editing to stop Lyme disease: caution is warranted

If so, we should find the most minimal intervention that might solve the problem. We should actively invite suggestions, concerns, and guidance from interested local communities who know their own environments best. And we should initially observe the effects on mostly uninhabited islands.

That’s exactly what my colleagues and I aim, a community-guided project working to prevent tick-borne disease through genome editing.