Gene drives can now be controlled in the wild.

This is pretty exotic stuff, but stay with me - it's not too hard to understand.

One hope for controlling disease spreading organisms (bacteria, mosquitos, whatever) is to release infertile or otherwise modified strains into the wild population. This is rarely a long-term or affordable solution, because of genetic drift. If the new strain doesn't out-compete the wild strain, it disappears quickly.

A few years ago, they developed a "gene drive" that can make the new strain spread through the population. The trick is that an organism that gets one copy of the gene copies it, so they have two copies and all their offspring will carry it.

Scientists are rightly cautious about using such technology, as there wasn't a way to undo it if it became necessary. Until now.

They've developed two technologies, with acronyms pronounced "eraser" and "e-chaser" to undo or chase down and replace the gene drivers in the wild.

This has huge implications for halting disease spread or eradicating invasive species without poisoning the environment.