First 'Malaria-Proof' Mosquito Created

Gisg writes "The University of Arizona team reported that their genetically modified mosquitoes are immune to the malaria-causing parasite, a single-cell organism called Plasmodium. Riehle and his colleagues tested their genetically-altered mosquitoes by feeding them malaria-infested blood. Not even one mosquito became infected with the malaria parasite."

Comments

side effect

[blackraven14250]

Just wait for the population explosion in (random mammal) once these mosquitoes start taking over.

Re:side effect

[Chuck Chunder]

Let's hope they are mammals of the tasty variety.

Re:side effect

[Greyfox]

Humans.

Speaking of which, why can't we just make a malaria-proof human?

Re:side effect

[Anonymous Coward]

it's called sickle-cell anemia...

Re:side effect

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

People get so much less worked up about genetic engineering in bugs nobody likes...

Re:side effect

[binarylarry]

Yeah, this'll be great until we find out they're also immune to mosquito repellent and their desire for human blood has been quadrupled.

Re:side effect

[lennier]

What could be scarier than VAMPIRE mosquitos!

oh wait

well, we could end up with ZOMBIE VAMPIRE mosquitos perhaps. Swat 'em and they come back...

Re:side effect

[Cassius Corodes]

Also, now they are a 1000 times their normal size.

Re:side effect

[Darth Sdlavrot]

Mostly it's humans.

http://www.hmc.psu.edu/healthinfo/m/malaria.htm

http://www.itg.be/evde/02_Malariap2.htm

But there is some anecdotal evidence that "long pig" does taste pretty good.

Re:side effect

[interkin3tic]

SOME people do.

From my perspective the most visible people opposed to genetically modified organisms are the least informed. The people who dress up and scream about "frankenfoods" often are doing so out of uninformed ignorance.

Other people (like me) are concerned about this too, but don't parade around screaming government conspiracy about it. Maybe we tend to be a little more open minded about it too, making us reserve judgement until we get some indication as to whether it's going to have major ecological disadvantages that would outweigh the advantages such as making healthy food cheaper or eradicating malaria.

I mean, I personally make transgenic bacteria most weeks, so not everyone who is cautious about GMOs are raving anti-science zealots.

Alternatively, maybe we're hypocrites. I'm guessing we'll get called that and more by extremists on both sides.

Re:side effect

[Mister Whirly]

The funny thing is we have been genetically altering plants since the time that botany started being recorded. Matching the perfect set of plants for pollination is also a genetic modification, as is all the cross-breeding of plant species that people have come up with over the last few thousand years.

Re:side effect

[mirix]

It's not so much that I'm afraid of GMOs in themselves, I'm much more afraid of Monsanto owning the rights to my food.

There was a farmer around these parts, somehow had some modified canola enter his field (via wind blowing pollen or..?) and Monsanto sued him for "license fees" on his crop. Think he ended up not having to pay after a few appeals, but the patent was upheld.

The other problem I recall hearing is that often the modified plants are less hardy than the natural version, so if your seed is contaminated it will no longer grow as well *without* roundup. I'm not entirely certain on this one though.

The whole concept of owning a strain of plant that can spread easily, and being able to extract license fees on it, seems very rotten to me, though.

Re:side effect

[Yvan256]

As long as it doesn't create NINJA PIRATE mosquitos, we're safe.

Re:side effect

[causality]

Other people (like me) are concerned about this too, but don't parade around screaming government conspiracy about it. Maybe we tend to be a little more open minded about it too, making us reserve judgement until we get some indication as to whether it's going to have major ecological disadvantages that would outweigh the advantages such as making healthy food cheaper or eradicating malaria.

As another poster has already said, the problem is the control that goes along with the patent rights.

I'll mention another problem. The moment we can write code of non-trivial complexity that can be perfectly verified to be entirely bug-free is the moment I will begin to believe that genetic engineers who plan to release a modified creature into the wild can foresee all possible consequences of their creation. At least with computer code, we design the entire system from the ground up, both the hardware and the software, we have complete control over both, and still cannot guarantee that something will function as intended. Methinks that perfectly verifying no negative and unforeseen consequences with genetics will be more difficult still, since we discovered that system and did not design it and do not fully control it.

Killer bees were an attempt to cross-breed two species of honeybee that normally would never be able to produce offspring. It was supposed to give us the hardiness of the African bee with the docility and honey production of the European bee. What we ended up with was a monster that has caused many highly unpleasant deaths. That wasn't malice on the part of the scientists. It was their inability to completely foresee what the result was going to be and how it was going to interact with an entire interconnected ecosystem of other species. There is precedent for wanting a bit more assurance than what has been offered prior to allowing such creatures in the wild.

Re:side effect

[Psaakyrn]

Mmmmmm... Soylent Green...

Re:side effect

[interkin3tic]

Don't put words in my mouth. I share their concerns. Raving lunatic extremists of any movement are stupid. My point was that they shouldn't reflect poorly on the movement as a whole.

Re:side effect

[interkin3tic]

It's not so much that I'm afraid of GMOs in themselves, I'm much more afraid of Monsanto owning the rights to my food.

I'm personally more concerned about things like unforseen health effects of consuming GMO, GMOs becoming invasive species, gene transfer from crops to pests creating super invasive species, and becoming dependent on monocultured food stocks leading to blights and starvation.

Monsanto being monsanto does make some of those things more of an issue. They're a lot more cavalier with risks than many organizations would be, and they certainly are doing all they can to press the monoculture, but there are plenty of big risks that don't have anything to do with patents.

Re:side effect

[causality]

It's not so much that I'm afraid of GMOs in themselves, I'm much more afraid of Monsanto owning the rights to my food.

I'm personally more concerned about things like unforseen health effects of consuming GMO, GMOs becoming invasive species, gene transfer from crops to pests creating super invasive species, and becoming dependent on monocultured food stocks leading to blights and starvation.

Monsanto being monsanto does make some of those things more of an issue. They're a lot more cavalier with risks than many organizations would be, and they certainly are doing all they can to press the monoculture, but there are plenty of big risks that don't have anything to do with patents.

If it were anything less critical and vital than our food supply, then I'd say take the risk and see what happens. But things like "widespread famine" or "potential dependency on one vendor for food" are not my concept of the ideal failure mode.

When Microsoft implements vendorlock, it's annoying and inconvenient and maybe expensive. When Monsanto implements vendorlock, it's a whole new level of control. I've never seen a single action or statement from them, an unelected private company, that made them worthy of having the sort of power and control that they are reaching for. If you do some research and know anything about them, you likely would never do business with them or any subsidiaries for any reason. I would be hesitant to trust benevolent, self-denying, noble people with this level of control over the food supply. They want me to trust amoral, self-serving, corporate types with that power? Really? It'd be a funny joke if it were not so absurd and misguided.

Just consider one question: if genetically modified foods are so great, if only ignorant jackasses would ever have a reason to doubt their virtues, if the facts are on the side of those who want to sell them, then why does Monsanto fight so hard and spend so much money and lobby so much to prevent non-GMO food producers from labeling their products as such? Why is it so incredibly important to them that the FDA not allow such a statement of fact on a food label? Whatever happened to the concept of informed consent? Why would someone with all the facts on their side fear informed consent and fight so hard to prevent it? You see, something here just doesn't add up. Anyone who would deprive you of making an informed choice rightly deserves suspicion.

Re:side effect

[ChromeAeonium]

The difference is that if you selectively pollinate one strain of plant with another strain of the same plant, you end up with a combination that could have occurred in nature.

Same with genetic engineering. Sure, it might take a while, but horizontal gene transfer does occur. And what can happen in nature or not is wuzzy too. What about species that cross, but extremely rarely, like apples x pear crosses, or Burbank's strawberry x raspberry cross? Or crosses between species that would never meet without humans, like the various black/raspberry and grape crosses that have parents from Old & New World species? Not that that matters, because what happens in nature is irrelevant. Glasses, vaccines, and chemotherapy don't happen in nature either. An appeal to nature is meaningless. Plants don't care how a gene got there, if by a particular gene came from breeding, a natural mutation, a mutagen induced mutation, natural horizontal gene transfer, or genetic engineering, or whatever, they just act on what's there.

With genetic engineering, you can modify organisms in ways that no amount of selective breeding of existing plants could have produced.

Not necessarily true. Every trait arose via some mutation somewhere, and I find it dubious that it could not happen again, given time. You may need evolutionary amounts of time, but it can be done.

The funny thing is that you believe these two scenarios are comparable in anything more than the most superficial sense of "yeah, something was modified by human activity" with no regard for the magnitude of the modification or whether it could have occurred without human intervention.

Sure, we have to be more careful with one than the other, but the principle is still the same, even if the process is different. Ever heard that old story about Churchill, the one where he asks a woman if she will sleep with him for a million pounds? She says yes, and he asks if she'll do it for five, and she asks him what type of lady she thinks she is. He replies, 'My dear, we have already established that, now we are just arguing over the price.' No one has a problem with breeding across species, or selecting mutations, or eating something that is just the product of a billion year old strain of mutant bacteria (that's everything). Compare the diversity of crops we've used extensively, like apples, melons, tomatoes, grapes, or corn, with something like jaboticaba, cassabanana, mauka root, safou, or teff, and tell me we're not playing with tons of altered genes. We've already established that all the forms of all the crops we've created over the years are ok, in principle, this really is just one more step, and in this case, you're only working with one gene at a time, not the half genes of each parent. Genetic engineering is just one more tool. Again, yes, it's more powerful, and with power comes responsibility (and if recent events have shown anything, it is that we can't always trust companies with that power), but the end result is still a plant with altered genes.

Speaking morally or ethically, it's already backwards from how it should be. A farmer can grow natural crops near another farmer who raises patented Monsanto crops. The wind blows and cross-pollination occurs between the two fields. If any legal action is to happen at all, it should be that the farmer growing natural crops can sue Monsanto or the other farmer for failure to contain their customized crops, as they are an unsolicited and unwanted invasion onto his private property.

And can I sue you if your standard hybrid corn cross pollinates my Country Gentleman or Blue Jade corn? I've never heard of that happening, why should it be any different for GMO pollen? That opens up as many cans of worms as Monsanto suing you for 'stealing' my trait.

So, we a

Re:side effect

[ChromeAeonium]

Funny you mention Africanized bees, because that was just conventional breeding. With absolutely anything, be it new biotech or techniques we've used for thousands of years, there is the potential for unforeseen side effects and unknown unknowns. Without some sort of omnipotence, you can't know every possible side effect that might come about. For example, look at the combustion engine. After years of usage, now we are told it is causing global warming. How could people at the start of the Industrial Revolution have foreseen this? Should we have expected them to never put the fossil fueled combustion engine into use because of what might happen? It is impossible to know what exactly each and every outcome of our actions may be. The smallpox vaccine could have some sort of complex, as of yet undescribed, intergenerational effect that could wipe out hundreds of millions tomorrow, and you can't disprove that statement. GMOs could do the same thing, either in terms of human health or ecologically, and you can't disprove that statement either. That's why the argument isn't 'Prove that there will never be a problem.' The argument is 'Sufficiently prove that there are no foreseeable problems.' And really, it isn't even that, the argument is 'Is the damage they cause (if indeed they do) less than the damage that agriculture will cause without them?' And in the meantime, the evidence we suggests that they are beneficial, so should we forgo those benefits in fear of a potential, but merely hypothetical, problem?

Re:side effect

[ChromeAeonium]

IF you are concerned about safety, FDA or no, there has been extensive research on it. Very many studies demonstrate no difference between GMOs and non-GM crops, and as a result, the general scientific consensus is that they're safe. Even if we assume Monsanto is influencing the FDA, I doubt they exert the same influence over countless relevant experts. Heck, even countries like Iran and China have developed their own homegrown strains of GMO. Iran made the worlds first Bt rice. Is Monsanto bribing off what one of most anti-US countries in the world?

Those who claim that GMOs are dangerous haven't done a very good job of proving their claims, either. For something to be dangerous, I think we can all agree it must have a reason, yes? Just being GMO is not a valid reason, it must have some sort of chemical compount, not present in the unmodified counterpart, that is dangerous. To date, no such compound from a commercially approved GMO has been identified. No genetic reasoning, no chemical pathways given for the production, and no proven cases of people actually hurt by them. No reason in theory, no evidence in practice. Starfruit and kiwi have presented more problems than GMOs, yet no one protests them. And of course, GMOs must be reviewed on a case by case basis, maybe someday the FDA royally screws up and one that kills people is released , but if it is, there'll be a reason for it. And since there is neither a known reason as to why any of the commercial GMOs would hurt anyone nor evidence that it happens, I guess the FDA just puts them in a catagory similar to Generally Recognized As Safe after the testing has been done.

As for the weeds, that is a very real problem. The thing there is, everyone saw that coming. Even Monsanto said it would happen. The problem was that there are only two traits for herbicide resistance, Starlink and Round-Up Ready, and only Round-Up Ready was extensively used. The problem wasn't overuse, but over-reliance. If there were more approved traits, and people used multiple herbicides, it would much more difficult for a weed to develop resistance. Even if it were to acquire the resistance through horizontal gene transfer, if there were multiple genes confirming resistance to multiple compounds, it is still very unlikely. These weeds aren't really 'superweeds' by the way, just regular weeds that are resistant to the most popular herbicide, so they can still be taken out by other chemicals and methods, but still, this never should have been allowed to happen in the first place. I don't know why it wasn't done, why those traits weren't pushed out there, maybe the FDA was lax in approving them, maybe activists protested, maybe the companies just didn't care, whatever, but yes, someone screwed the pooch on that one.

Re:side effect

[ZeroExistenZ]

I have smacked one hard between two flat palms right in front of my face, pulled my hands apart...and it flies away.

Two words: Depth perception...

Re:side effect

[silentcoder]

Mammal most likely to explode would be the one who has the largest population in Malaria regions already, is most susceptible to infection and has the highest mortality rate from infection.

That would be human beings.

Whether or not a further homo sapien population explosion in Africa is something you consider a good or a bad thing may be debated by some (batshit insane) people. Personally though, I reckon this is one case where advocating population control through birth control is probably better than advocating it through mass infections by a parasite that causes perhaps one of the most painful deaths in nature.

PS. Writing as somebody who has actually HAD malaria. Fortunate enough not to have had a resistant strain. I live in Africa (though I no longer live in a Malaria region, I grew up in one).

Re:side effect

[zolltron]

Some people have speculated that the population explosion in African and Asian countries is caused by high mortality rates. When parents need children for farming, working, or for dowries -- and when there is a relatively high risk of the child dying before puberty -- people opt to have a lot of children to ensure that they survive to be productive.

I'm not saying I believe it, but one has to be careful in assuming that a decrease in mortality will necessarily mean an increase in population.

Re:side effect

[dr2chase]

No, AC is correct. If you carry 0 genes for SS, you are vulnerable to Malaria. If you carry 1 gene for SS, you are protected from malaria, but do not suffer the effects of SS. 2 genes for SS, you get SS.

Without DDT or drugs in a malarial region, if one or both parents are 1-SS, then half their children (statistically) will live. 1-SS/0-SS, half the children are 1-SS, and protected from malaria, half are 0-SS, and likely to succumb. 1-SS/1-SS, half are 1-SS and protected, .25 are 0-SS, and .25 are 2-SS and get SS disease.

Suppose the actual chance of dying from malaria before reproducing is P. IF P > .25P + .25, then the SS gene is favored. 3P/4 > 1/4, implies that P > 1/3. (Assuming no other causes of death, which complicates the math quite a bit.)

Re:side effect

[Loco3KGT]

You should believe it.. It's the main reason family sizes have shrunk in modern civilization - the need to have many children to do these activities has diminished, thus the need to have many children has diminished.

It might seem bad, or not politically correct, to think this way but if you look at family sizes over the last 1000 years in first world nations you will see the trend.

That's nice.

[Securityemo]

The malaria parasite is not a bacteria or virus, but could it evolve past this defense? And how would you make this variant of mosquito out-compete the normal, already established ones?

Re:That's nice.

[Daniel_Staal]

It's always possible it could evolve past this defense, but as a parasite it doesn't evolve as fast as a bacteria or virus. So if they can spread fast enough, it's possible the parasite wouldn't have the time.

As for how this variant would out-compete the normal... If it otherwise matches the normal, it's quite possible this would be enough in and of itself: It wouldn't be spending energy on feeding a common parasite, and therefore would be able to grow stronger & faster on the same amount of food as another mosquito that is infected.

Worst case really is if the trait waters down when they breed with regular mosquitos: Then it might be weak enough that some of the parasite survives, which would then be a way for it to get a chance at resistance...

Re:That's nice.

[interkin3tic]

And how would you make this variant of mosquito out-compete the normal, already established ones?

I'd hazard a guess that the simple, but probably more dangerous way would be to make these already transgenic malaria proof mosquitoes immune to some type of pesticide, so they'd have a selective advantage.

A somewhat safer, but far more expensive way would be to breed large amounts of the malaria proof mosquitoes and release them to just crowd out the normal ones.

Expensive because in addition to the raising a lot of them, you'd have to convince people to let you release large amount of blood sucking parasites near them. Other blood sucking parasites would get rich suing the pants off of that. And it's going to be an uphill battle releasing -any- transgenic organism into the wild. I think concern is entirely justified there as we have a poor track record managing the environment, but I could be convinced it's worth testing if we are reasonably sure it will just prevent malaria transmission. Artificially evolving mosquitoes to be immune to pesticides though would be extremely dangerous and seems like it has a good chance of backfiring if the genes for malaria immunity could be dropped but the pesticide immunity were retained.

You can guess which approach I suspect is going to be taken.

How about a bite-proof mosquito?

[DWMorse]

Something to REALLY benefit mankind!

Re:How about a bite-proof mosquito?

[Cynonamous Anoward]

bite-proof mosquitoes? I didn't realize that there was a big problem with people biting mosquitoes!

Build a Better Mosquito

[Local ID10T]

and... umm... yeah.

Needs just one more mod ...

[electricprof]

They need to be fitted with lasers on their heads to kill off all the other mosquitos.

Re:Needs just one more mod ...

[TooMuchToDo]

No need. There are already concepts designed to kill them with lasers all on their own:

http://intellectualventureslab.com/?p=653

I created one years ago.

[pookemon]

First malaria proof mosquito? I created one years ago.

*splat*

There's another.

Re:Mosquito infected with malaria???

[blueg3]

The mosquitoes are actually infected, it just doesn't significantly negatively affect them. That's a common way of being a carrier.

Oh, wonderful.

[SvnLyrBrto]

Great... just great.

Here's an idea. How about, instead of curing their diseases, we put out efforts instead into eradicating the bastards. It's not like we don't know how to drive a species into extinction. We've done it, or are on the verge of doing it, to many cool species. So why the hell can't we do it to one of the more bastardly unpleasant ones?

Any hippy that objects... let's make them extinct too.

Re:Oh, wonderful.

[Jbcarpen]

First look at the breeding rate of all the different species we've driven extinct. Then compare to the reproduction rate of mosquitoes. Also compare the food sources and available habitats.

Problem with driving mosquitoes extinct is that they are among the (relatively) few species on the planet that can live almost anywhere we can, and regards us as food. It also only takes a few of them surviving, and then with their reproduction rate they're back very quickly in that area.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it's be a bitch to do and there'd be a lot of bykill that we don't really want. It'd also take out a very low level creature in the foodchain.

Re:Oh, wonderful.

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd also take out a very low level creature in the foodchain.

What the fuck do you mean "LOW", wetbar? Last I checked, we were eating you.

Signed,
The Mosquitos

Just wait til the lawsuits

[Solandri]

Fast-forward 50 years. Natural mosquitoes have been eradicated, replaced by this new genetically modified mosquito. Malaria is wiped off the face of the earth. Two million lives a year are saved. There are rainbows in the sky. Cute puppies and kittens sleep together in every home.

Until some lawyer files a class action lawsuit. Since all mosquitoes are now the genetically modified variety, the researchers and company which developed the buggers and the governments which permitted it are now liable for the pain and suffering associated with every mosquito bite on the planet.

Mozambique as a positive example?

[Animal Farm Pig]

I wonder where you've been in Mozambique... Costa do Sol doesn't count. I was a contractor in Manica province a couple of years back. I got malaria four times in one year. Every other international I knew contracted malaria. Mozambican colleagues were also infected often. We had treated nets, sprayed pesticides in our facilities, didn't let water stand, etc., etc.

It doesn't work. Maybe you can point to some percentage decrease in an area, but people are still getting and dying from malaria. Relying on individual action (treated nets, spraying own facilities) or an on-going effort organized by the government (a national spraying campaign)... recipe for failure.

I'm not saying we shouldn't take those kinds of actions-- any reduction is good. I'm saying that we should work towards total eradication of malaria. Ending poverty should put the material conditions in place, but maybe GM mosquitoes could help along the way.

It already outcompetes.

[Tatarize]

Malaria harms mosquitoes too. An earlier attempt of this concept tried to outcompete factor and found that due to the added immunity the mosquito quickly rose to around 90% after a few generations. In theory, all they need to do is release this mosquito and it should have the immunity gene take over the vast majority of the mosquito population in short order and protect a lot of humans as a consequence.

Also, you can't really evolve past a defense if the wall is instantly 50 feet high. You need some leeway like not taking the full doses of antibiotics or a rather large quasi-species of HIV to have something in the works that kind-of works and then play off that. This makes the mosquitoes rather instantly immune and likely couldn't be evolved around, anymore than a deer could evolve a defense for a high powered sniper rifle that appeared on the scene rather suddenly in evolutionary terms.

Malaria in Mozambique

[ProfessionalCookie]

I live in Mozambique (Pemba, Cabo Delgado) and we've got plenty of Malaria to go around. It's very, very common. And I'll look up the numbers for you...

In Mozambique 2006, WHO reports:

22 Million Suspected Cases
7 Million Confirmed
19 Thousand Dead
Malaria instance rate went from 20% to 30% from 2001 to 2007

And here's my citation: http://malaria.who.int/wmr2008/MAL2008-CountryProfiles/MAL2008-Mozambique-EN.pdf

Re:Malaria in Mozambique

[ProfessionalCookie]

By the way, Mozambique is about twice the size of California with a population of about 22 million. Yes that means
there was at least one reported fever that was suspected to be malaria related for every single person in the country.

*Note some people are infected more than once per year and some not at all.