Among the applications that have been proposed are reversing the genetic causes of herbicide and pesticide resistance that have evolved among organisms that threaten agriculture; promoting biodiversity by controlling, even eradicating, invasive species populations like Asian carp, cane toads, and mice; and stamping out infectious diseases such as Lyme disease, which is caused by certain bacteria transmitted by ticks, and schistosomiasis, caused by flatworm parasites transmitted by aquatic snails. But the most momentum, by far, is in the push to use gene drives to target the mosquito.
