Thomas explained that work on a gene-drive mouse was going slower than he’d hoped. Still, he thought by the end of the decade someone would develop one. It might be an X-shredder, or it might rely on a design that’s yet to be imagined. Mathematical modeling suggests that an effective suppression drive would be extremely efficient; a hundred gene-drive mice released on an island could take a population of fifty thousand ordinary mice down to zero within a few years. “So that’s quite striking,” Thomas said. “It’s something to aim for.”
