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No more mosquitoes? (1 Viewer)

gianmarco

gianmarco

Footballguy
Males only

Just in time for Fathers Day, British researchers say they have genetically engineered mosquitoes so they only produce male offspring.

Male mosquitoes don’t bite, so they hope they could use their lab-produced mosquitoes to make populations of the insects plummet in mosquito-ridden areas.

Their lab-engineered mosquitoes are fertile. But the scientists damaged the X chromosome that the father mosquito would normally pass along to its offspring, so that the only young mosquitoes that would hatch alive would be male.

Lab tests showed these altered mosquitoes virtually bred themselves out of existence after a few generations, researchers reported in the journal Nature Communications.

Just like people, mosquito sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes. Males have one X — inherited from the mother, and one Y — inherited from the father. Females have two X chromosomes, one inherited from each parent. So if one is damaged, the female offspring cannot survive.

"Essentially the mosquitoes carry out the work for us."

Usually, about half a male’s sperm will carry an X and the other half will carry a Y. Female eggs carry one X.

The team at Imperial College London has been working for years to create male-only mosquito families, but the method they used to damage the X chromosome ended up killing all the mosquito larvae. Now they’ve perfected the method, Roberto Galizi, Andrea Crisanti and colleagues report.

The researchers spliced a gene into the mosquitoes that slices up the X chromosome when sperm is produced.

“Shredding of the paternal X chromosome prevents it from being transmitted to the next generation, resulting in fully fertile mosquito strains that produce 95 percent male offspring,” they wrote.

Female mosquitoes drink blood when they are producing eggs; male mosquitoes sip nectar.

"What is most promising about our results is that they are self-sustaining,” said Nikolai Windbichler, who helped lead the study. “Once modified mosquitoes are introduced, males will start to produce mainly sons, and their sons will do the same, so essentially the mosquitoes carry out the work for us."

It’s likely that mosquito populations would rebound after a few years, so researchers would have to continually re-introduce genetically engineered mosquitoes. But in theory, the approach could be used to fight all types of mosquitoes — not just the Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes that transmit most malaria, but also Aedes aegypti and other species that transmit dengue, Chikungunya, West Nile and other deadly viruses.

"The research is still in its early days, but I am really hopeful that this new approach could ultimately lead to a cheap and effective way to eliminate malaria from entire regions,” said Galizi.

Outside experts said wiping out mosquitoes would be unlikely to disrupt any ecosystem. "The mosquitoes are not keystone species in their ecosystems. No other animal is dependent on them for food, and we don't rely on mosquitoes to eat anything," said Luke Alphey of Britain's Pirbright Institute.

Other teams are using genetic engineering to fight dengue. One approach introduces a flaw that kills off young mosquitoes before they mature. These mosquitoes are being tested in Brazil, and federal authorities are checking into allowing them to be tried out in Key West, Florida, where dengue is threatening to make a comeback.

Another team is infecting the insects with a bacteria called Wolbachia that kills the mosquitoes while they are young and also seems to prevent them from carrying dengue. It’s being tested in Vietnam.

"I am really hopeful that this new approach could ultimately lead to a cheap and effective way to eliminate malaria from entire regions."

The World Health Organization says malaria infects more than 200 million people a year, and it kills close to half a million children. The parasite that causes the disease can evolve resistance to drugs, and there's no vaccine yet.

There's also no vaccine against dengue, West Nile or Chikungunya. Dengue infects as many as 400 million people a year. Mosquito-borne diseases kill 725,000 people a year, according to the Gates Foundation.
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Ecology: A world without mosquitoes

Eradicating any organism would have serious consequences for ecosystems — wouldn't it? Not when it comes to mosquitoes, finds Janet Fang.

Every day, Jittawadee Murphy unlocks a hot, padlocked room at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, to a swarm of malaria-carrying mosquitoes (Anopheles stephensi). She gives millions of larvae a diet of ground-up fish food, and offers the gravid females blood to suck from the bellies of unconscious mice — they drain 24 of the rodents a month. Murphy has been studying mosquitoes for 20 years, working on ways to limit the spread of the parasites they carry. Still, she says, she would rather they were wiped off the Earth.

That sentiment is widely shared. Malaria infects some 247 million people worldwide each year, and kills nearly one million. Mosquitoes cause a huge further medical and financial burden by spreading yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya virus and West Nile virus. Then there's the pest factor: they form swarms thick enough to asphyxiate caribou in Alaska and now, as their numbers reach a seasonal peak, their proboscises are plunged into human flesh across the Northern Hemisphere.

So what would happen if there were none? Would anyone or anything miss them? Nature put this question to scientists who explore aspects of mosquito biology and ecology, and unearthed some surprising answers.

There are 3,500 named species of mosquito, of which only a couple of hundred bite or bother humans. They live on almost every continent and habitat, and serve important functions in numerous ecosystems. "Mosquitoes have been on Earth for more than 100 million years," says Murphy, "and they have co-evolved with so many species along the way." Wiping out a species of mosquito could leave a predator without prey, or a plant without a pollinator. And exploring a world without mosquitoes is more than an exercise in imagination: intense efforts are under way to develop methods that might rid the world of the most pernicious, disease-carrying species (see 'War against the winged').

Yet in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms. Life would continue as before — or even better. When it comes to the major disease vectors, "it's difficult to see what the downside would be to removal, except for collateral damage", says insect ecologist Steven Juliano, of Illinois State University in Normal. A world without mosquitoes would be "more secure for us", says medical entomologist Carlos Brisola Marcondes from the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. "The elimination of Anopheles would be very significant for mankind."
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http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

 
I let mice run freely in my house. If I capture them and put them outside, who knows what kind of ecological chain of events could happen? Emus might go extinct.

 
Without mosquitoes, thousands of plant species would lose a group of pollinators. Adults depend on nectar for energy (only females of some species need a meal of blood to get the proteins necessary to lay eggs). Yet McAllister says that their pollination isn't crucial for crops on which humans depend.

VS:

"The ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes is that you have more people. That's the consequence," says Strickman. Many lives would be saved; many more would no longer be sapped by disease. Countries freed of their high malaria burden, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, might recover the 1.3% of growth in gross domestic product that the World Health Organization estimates they are cost by the disease each year, potentially accelerating their development. There would be "less burden on the health system and hospitals, redirection of public-health expenditure for vector-borne diseases control to other priority health issues, less absenteeism from schools", says Jeffrey Hii, malaria scientist for the World Health Organization in Manila.
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Its not nice to fool Mother Nature. I'm not high on this at all. There are always unknown repercussions to things like this.

 
Hilts said:
squistion said:
"it's difficult to see what the downside would be to removal, except for collateral damage", says insect ecologist Steven Juliano, of Illinois State University in Normal.
Click to expand...
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
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That sounds like it could be serious downside. What exactly does he mean by "collateral damage"?
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"They don't occupy an unassailable niche in the environment," says entomologist Joe Conlon, of the American Mosquito Control Association in Jacksonville, Florida. "If we eradicated them tomorrow, the ecosystems where they are active will hiccup and then get on with life. Something better or worse would take over."
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I came here to post the Jurassic Park thing but it's already been done...

That said, I usually am all for not disturbing the natural food chain, but honestly, I can't think of a bug I'd rather get rid of.

What a great purgatory for the worst bug ever...a giant mosquito sausage-fest.

 
I don't see why people are saying it's a bad idea, when they've already done research to say otherwise. They aren't a major food source for any living creature. The pollination they do is of marginal benefit, if any at all. Of course, there's always the unknown factor out there. But if it can eradicate these terrible mosquito-borne diseases and improve the quality of life for millions of people, then I am all for it. I, for one, welcome our new all-male mosquito revue.

 
Great until this causes natural selection for resistant mosquitoes to dominate that carry some new life threatening disease for humans.

 
cstu said:
Without mosquitoes, thousands of plant species would lose a group of pollinators. Adults depend on nectar for energy (only females of some species need a meal of blood to get the proteins necessary to lay eggs). Yet McAllister says that their pollination isn't crucial for crops on which humans depend.

VS:

"The ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes is that you have more people. That's the consequence," says Strickman. Many lives would be saved; many more would no longer be sapped by disease. Countries freed of their high malaria burden, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, might recover the 1.3% of growth in gross domestic product that the World Health Organization estimates they are cost by the disease each year, potentially accelerating their development. There would be "less burden on the health system and hospitals, redirection of public-health expenditure for vector-borne diseases control to other priority health issues, less absenteeism from schools", says Jeffrey Hii, malaria scientist for the World Health Organization in Manila.
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Click to expand...
Just what we need. More humans

 
If the populations rebound normally in a few years as the article states, then the threat of the "unknown" consequence really isn't all that great.

 
gianmarco said:
Males only

Just in time for Fathers Day, British researchers say they have genetically engineered mosquitoes so they only produce male offspring.

Male mosquitoes don’t bite, so they hope they could use their lab-produced mosquitoes to make populations of the insects plummet in mosquito-ridden areas.

Their lab-engineered mosquitoes are fertile. But the scientists damaged the X chromosome that the father mosquito would normally pass along to its offspring, so that the only young mosquitoes that would hatch alive would be male.

Lab tests showed these altered mosquitoes virtually bred themselves out of existence after a few generations, researchers reported in the journal Nature Communications.

Just like people, mosquito sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes. Males have one X — inherited from the mother, and one Y — inherited from the father. Females have two X chromosomes, one inherited from each parent. So if one is damaged, the female offspring cannot survive.

"Essentially the mosquitoes carry out the work for us."

Usually, about half a male’s sperm will carry an X and the other half will carry a Y. Female eggs carry one X.

The team at Imperial College London has been working for years to create male-only mosquito families, but the method they used to damage the X chromosome ended up killing all the mosquito larvae. Now they’ve perfected the method, Roberto Galizi, Andrea Crisanti and colleagues report.

The researchers spliced a gene into the mosquitoes that slices up the X chromosome when sperm is produced.

“Shredding of the paternal X chromosome prevents it from being transmitted to the next generation, resulting in fully fertile mosquito strains that produce 95 percent male offspring,” they wrote.

Female mosquitoes drink blood when they are producing eggs; male mosquitoes sip nectar.

"What is most promising about our results is that they are self-sustaining,” said Nikolai Windbichler, who helped lead the study. “Once modified mosquitoes are introduced, males will start to produce mainly sons, and their sons will do the same, so essentially the mosquitoes carry out the work for us."

It’s likely that mosquito populations would rebound after a few years, so researchers would have to continually re-introduce genetically engineered mosquitoes. But in theory, the approach could be used to fight all types of mosquitoes — not just the Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes that transmit most malaria, but also Aedes aegypti and other species that transmit dengue, Chikungunya, West Nile and other deadly viruses.

"The research is still in its early days, but I am really hopeful that this new approach could ultimately lead to a cheap and effective way to eliminate malaria from entire regions,” said Galizi.

Outside experts said wiping out mosquitoes would be unlikely to disrupt any ecosystem. "The mosquitoes are not keystone species in their ecosystems. No other animal is dependent on them for food, and we don't rely on mosquitoes to eat anything," said Luke Alphey of Britain's Pirbright Institute.

Other teams are using genetic engineering to fight dengue. One approach introduces a flaw that kills off young mosquitoes before they mature. These mosquitoes are being tested in Brazil, and federal authorities are checking into allowing them to be tried out in Key West, Florida, where dengue is threatening to make a comeback.

Another team is infecting the insects with a bacteria called Wolbachia that kills the mosquitoes while they are young and also seems to prevent them from carrying dengue. It’s being tested in Vietnam.

"I am really hopeful that this new approach could ultimately lead to a cheap and effective way to eliminate malaria from entire regions."

The World Health Organization says malaria infects more than 200 million people a year, and it kills close to half a million children. The parasite that causes the disease can evolve resistance to drugs, and there's no vaccine yet.

There's also no vaccine against dengue, West Nile or Chikungunya. Dengue infects as many as 400 million people a year. Mosquito-borne diseases kill 725,000 people a year, according to the Gates Foundation.
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Looking forward to Fennis' Chikungunya stats updates.

:popcorn:

 
Normally I would say this is a bad idea because every creature has a role in the ecosystem......but really what positive purpose do mosquitoes fill?

 
2014 Chikungunya cases in US: 1,850

2014 Chikungunya cases in US and transmitted in US: 11

2014 Chikungunya cases in US and transmitted in US in states other than Florida: 0

 
Grayson Brownmrblerg10/15/14 10:44am

The genetically modified mosquitoes are showing great promise for suppressing disease. The most common modification is to have a mosquito that cannot synthesize a specific chemical which then must be provided under laboratory conditions. These mosquitoes are released, mate with the wild mosquitoes, and their offspring are not viable. While there are always downside risks to any insect control method, this one seems to be on the low risk side of the scale as no negative effects have been observed in the field as yet.
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Brown directs the University of Kentucky's Public Health Entomology Lab, where they look at everything from the spread of Chikungunya to how flooding impacts mosquito populations. Brown has also been a professor of entomology for over 30 years and was president of the Entomological Society of America (the largest such society in the world) in 2012. His research focuses particularly on mosquitoes, the illnesses they can spread, and their control.

 
  • Alternatives that are equal to low concentrations of DEET include:
  • a. Bite Blocker (a soybean oil)
  • b. Picaridin (e.g. Cutter Advanced)
  • c. Lemon eucalyptus – numerous products. Don't use anything higher than about 30% on your skin. Don't use the eucalyptus oil that is sold for aromatherapy (it's nearly 100% and would be toxic).
Click to expand...
 
Fennis said:
2014 Chikungunya cases in US: 1,850

2014 Chikungunya cases in US and transmitted in US: 11

2014 Chikungunya cases in US and transmitted in US in states other than Florida: 0
Click to expand...
2014 Annoying Mosquito Bites: 493,381,119,301 in US

 
The homo mosquitos are LOVING this idea.

I can hear the chants now, "#### suckers not blood suckers"

 
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