Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Dengue Fever

Christina Valencia points us to a Wired story about scientists who plan to use genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce the population of Dengue-carrying insects. The altered genes cause newly born mosquitoes to die before they are able to breed if they are not supplied with a crucial antibiotic. This is a more aggressive approach than the anti-Malaria work we discussed last year. From Wired: "Mosquitoes pass dengue fever to up to 100 million people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to 5 million die. If the scientists can replicate their results in real field conditions, their technology could kill half of the next generation of dengue mosquitoes, which scientists say would significantly reduce the spread of the disease. If all goes well the company envisions releasing the insects in Malaysia on a large scale in three years."

Comments

Ripple Effect

[Doc Ruby]

Those mosquitoes might suck (pun intended :P), but they're food for a lot of animals that don't suck. If we just eliminate all the mosquitoes, we probably can't tell how we'll affect the rest of the ecosystem. Eliminating the dengue fever germs will have its effect, but I'm not too worried about depriving the worms of the corpses they're used to growing fat on.

Whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[caller9]

Am I the only one that's noticed a ton of these "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tags recently. Did the mad scientist class of '07 get to work quickly or what? Who is throwing all this money at applying knowledge we barely have to applications we can't imagine the repercussions of. Some of this stuff could turn out a little worse than introducing cats to Australia, if you catch my meaning.

Re:Are mosquitos important?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I have often wondered (living in the mosquito-ridden South), if mosquitoes have any benefit to the ecosystem at all.

Bottom line is that Mosquito larvae are extremely beneficial to ecosystems (as food). Read this for a quick overview. Contains the quote:

mosquito larvae might be pictured as: "small machines that transform algae, bacteria and organic matter into compact packages of protein.

If you want to read something a little more specific to the south, try this Mosquito Virtues article.