Darwin Day Celebration – Can Humans Guide Evolution?

Celebrate the birthday of Charles Darwin with the Baltimore Coalition of Reason! We’ll meet at BES to hear a talk by Dr. Allan Spradling of the Carnegie Institution for Science. The title is “Can humans soon guide evolution in the wild using gene editing?”

We will order pizza for dinner, so please join the meetup or RSVP to Emil Volcheck at volcheck@acm.org. Childcare will be provided on request. Please let us know by February 5 if you will be bringing children. Join the Meetup.

Talk Description: Evolution results from competition in the wild between individuals of a species that differ in characteristics genetically encoded in their DNA. In recent years making small changes in animal and human DNA genomes has become easier due to the advent of CRISPR gene editing. Will it be possible in the near future to modify mosquito populations to reduce vector borne disease, or even to make “enhanced” humans?