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Glowing Mosquitos Aid Malaria Battle
kfz.versicherung writes "The glowing mosquitos were created by attaching a gene for fluorescence found in jellyfish to a gene expressed only in a male mosquito's sexual organs. Even if this sounds funny, this technique is used to collect all males which are then sterilized and released in areas plagued by malaria flies. While sterile female mosquito can still transmit malaria, the sterile males will mate with the females but produce no offspring, so the insect population drops. An automated machine, capable of sorting 18,000 larvae per hour, detects fluorescence inside the larvae and a puff of air will divert the males into a separate area."
As you may be aware, only female mosquitoes suck blood (and thereby transmit disease). The blood is to feed the eggs they lay. (Mosquitoes mostly feed on nectar, but eggs need protein.)
Whem a female mosquito has mated and found a blood meal (I forget the order of those two, but it doesn't matter), it will lay eggs.
Now, here's the trick: by captive breeding and then releasing zillions of sterile male mosquitoes, which will hunt down and mate with wild female mosquitoes, those eggs will not hatch, and the number of wild mosquitoes will go down. (Until the females evolve some defense like multiple matings.)
So you have *effectively* sterilized the wild females. This is a good thing.
You'd prefer not to release female mosquitoes, because even if they're sterile, they'll still suck blood and spread disease.
The article is about a technique for sexing captive-bred mosquitoes. By adding a very easy-to-see sex marker. None of this affects the generits of the wild population at all. They're just building an army of little biological robots that will hunt down and neutralize wild females.
This is hardly some new idea for controlling problematic insect populations.
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http://www.everythingabout.net/articles/biology/a