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."

Comments

I don't get it

[biryokumaru]

Okay, why make their "gonads" flouresce if you're just gonna make'em sterile? Doesn't help in sorting the offspring.

This is what I gathered from TFA:

1 - Breed thousands of modified mosquitoes in a lab so the males have flourescent "gonads"
2 - Put them through a sorting machine that sorts out all the ones that glow
3 - Sterilize the batch that were glowing
4 - Release them into the wild and they'll hook up with the females
5 - Less baby mosquitoes

Problems that first occured to me with that:
1 - Why not just sterilize them all? Is that hard or something? It said that the females "still spread malaria" so maybe it's that only female mosquitoes suck blood. Thats what wikipedia says. So I guess they just don't want to introduce a whole bunch of disease carrying insects.
2 - Are mosquitoes monogamous? Why will this cut down on their population? If the males are sterile, won't the females still want to breed or something? Wikipedia doesn't go into that...

Re:I don't get it

[biryokumaru]

Thank you for explaining about the mating =]. That was bugging me (pun unintended).

The article wasn't too specific on the source of the mosquitoes, but an engineered population makes more sense than a captured one. Also, I'm pretty sure that the mosquitoes are bred in a lab, to give'em all glowin' gonads. Thus, by "sterilize them all" I meant sterilze both the males and females of the lab population. Ultimately, the problem with that is to release both genders is to release a disease-spreading insect. Thats why their gonads glow, so they only hafta release the males. That's what I meant above.

I refuted my own inquiry when I mentioned it. I wasn't very clear, I tried to suggest the thoughts I had on the article along with explanations I came across in case they were common misunderstandings.

Re:So the conversation went something like this...

[Scarblac]

Seriously, why would you spend all that time and money building a machine to sort 18,000 larvae per hour instead of just building an equally impressive FLY KILLING MACHINE.

These mosquites aren't rounded up, they're bred. And they're sterile. They will breed, but not produce offspring. Releasing thousands of them into the wild will reduce the offspring of the wild population. And that's just reiterating the summary...

Of course, if you can build the fly killing machine, by all means do so.

Fighting Evolution...

[benjamindees]

Biological warfare is beginning to get interesting. For years, the best we could do against insect pests was to kill off the weakest ones, leaving the most capable to reproduce and multiply. We were just hastening evolution, and making our enemies stronger.

As a result, we now have resistent insects, resistent bacteria, and we're beginning to see new outbreaks of viruses that we thought we had eradicated.

We were trying to fight a faceless, undying mob by overpowering them with brute strength. Now, we're learning better. Instead of brute strength, we've begun to exploit our only advantage: intelligence. We're finding ways to use our enemies against themselves. Instead of multiplying in strength, we will help the insects to multiply themselves into oblivion.

Let's just hope we don't hasten the evolution of mammalian maternal traits in the insects in the process.

Reading comprehension

[Anonymous Coward]

Just reading the summary will explain all of your questions.

The fluorescent gene will not propagate in the wild, because it is only attached to sterile mosquitos. The fluorescence is only used to sort the males from the females.

As for "step 3", you just made that up. Nowhere in the article or in the summary does it talk about using a machine to kill wild mosquitos after they've been allowed to multiply.

Re:DDT

[scheme]

DDT was highly effective at killing mosquitos, the incidence rate of malaria dropped amazingly after it was put in use. However, someone had the idea that saving a few Peregrine Falcons was more important than tens of thousands of human lives. Too bad.

DDT resistant mosquitos appeared in 1960 and have spread pretty much everywhere. Using more DDT doesn't work since the mosquitos become more and more resistant due to overexpression of cytochrome P450. Meanwhile, things like fish, birds and people who happen to eat those fish or birds get increasing concentrations of DDT and eventually get poisoned or start seeing birth defects.

Unfortunately, we don't go through a few generations every few months and can't quickly develop DDT resistance like mosquitos. The falcons were just an indicator and continuing would have increased the incidence of birth defects in people.