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Sex-Switched Mosquitoes May Help In Fight Against Diseases

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-girls-allowed dept.

cstacy writes: Only the female mosquitoes bite and transmit viral diseases such as Dengue Fever. Scientists have finally discovered the elusive genetic switch called Nix, that determines the sex of these blood sucking insects, and hope to selectively eliminate females to control the spread of diseases. "Nix provides us with exciting opportunities to harness mosquito sex in the fight against infectious diseases because maleness is the ultimate disease-refractory trait," explained Zhijian Jake Tu, an affiliate of the Fralin Life Science Institute and a biochemistry professor from Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

20 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Why not just kill them all? by joetomato · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Am I mistaken, or if you switch off the ability for them to be female, after a single generation, they'll be extinct anyway. So why not just kill them all and be done with it?

    1. Re:Why not just kill them all? by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2, Informative

      Mosquitoes don't fill any ecological niche that couldn't be filled by a host of other species.

      Some bugs just need to die.

    2. Re:Why not just kill them all? by Kuroji · · Score: 2

      I seem to recall reading a few articles in the last year where it's been determined that, while mosquitoes have a relatively large percent of the planet's biomass, removing them would have very little consequence; the things that eat them don't eat them primarily.

    3. Re:Why not just kill them all? by pubwvj · · Score: 2

      "Not a good plan usually."

      "Usually" is a very important qualifier there. There are some things we do not need, some things the ecosystem does not need, some things that can be removed without disrupting the greater cycle of life. Some of those things are just annoying. Yes, there are things that eat them but not that are dependent on them. Eliminating them eliminates an annoyance. Take the Polio virus for example. Please.

    4. Re:Why not just kill them all? by meerling · · Score: 2

      Yes, because you will unable to be able to get them all, so there will still be a breeding population, but hopefully much smaller and mostly consisting of non-infectious males.

    5. Re:Why not just kill them all? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Arctic mosquitos do. In places too cold for most bees or tundra where there are no trees for a hive arctic mosquitos pollinate and drive you batshit insane at the same time.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    6. Re:Why not just kill them all? by narf0708 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      While I agree with the conclusion, I do beleive you arrived at it a bit incorrectly. It's that mosquitoes don't fill any useful ecological niche. Their sole purpose in the environment is to make things suffer, and they don't have any positive contributions which even come close to evening that out. This is a rare thing that should enable us to slaughter them in massive quantities to the point of extinction without any noticeable effect on the environment except that more people will be willing to go on nature walks.

      --
      "Violence is not the answer. Violence is the question. The answer is yes."
    7. Re:Why not just kill them all? by penguinoid · · Score: 2

      Am I mistaken, or if you switch off the ability for them to be female, after a single generation, they'll be extinct anyway. So why not just kill them all and be done with it?

      It's less toxic to us and the environment, to use genetics rather than pesticide. It's also potentially more reliable, and potentially cheaper, and extremely targeted. If it's heritable, then your pest control can increase in numbers so you need much less. And males can find females at quite a range.

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    8. Re:Why not just kill them all? by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Can't that be said for everything?

      No it can't, you illiterate dickhead relativist. Mosquitoes are genuinely useless.

    9. Re:Why not just kill them all? by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No. The pressure on deer is different when the wolves are exterminated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      The deer population saw a higher equilibrium, because the human pressures were different. Wolves did a good job of iproving the deer breeding stock. Sick and weak are selectively targeted, when human hunters will deliberately not choose the sick and weak.

      So yes, there are differences, and sometimes they end up larger changes that people assume. Wolves move rivers. The bears and humans and such that filled the niche didn't have the same effect.

      But mosquitos have no benefits. Kill them all, and I'll not get bit again. And we'll stop malaria and other diseases.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    10. Re:Why not just kill them all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      think of the ecological structure as a pyramid pull enough crap from the bottom and the whole thing collapses. Mosquitoes make up a significant portion of the diet of other insects and birds. By removing the mosquitoes you put pressure on other insects that now become food targets who may or may not be as hardy at the breading cycle as mosquitoes. So now we inadvertently destroy another and then another species due to over predation. How long till the pyramid collapses? I think that your powers of observation and logic are in abeyance.

    11. Re:Why not just kill them all? by KGIII · · Score: 2

      It turns out that DDT was not that bad and is actually legal again for limited use. The whole thing about DDT and bird eggs was based on shoddy data. No, I am not kidding. See Wikipedia if you are curious. I did not believe it at first myself so I was curious.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    12. Re:Why not just kill them all? by Rinikusu · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There's a huge number of small fish that love eating mosquito larvae, with a large number of fish (and birds, frogs, snakes, etc) that eat those small fish, etc, and even larger animals that eat those fish...

      --
      If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
    13. Re: Why not just kill them all? by brianerst · · Score: 2

      Slash dot ate the Nature link. It's here: http://www.nature.com/news/201...

  2. China already selectively eliminates females by turkeydance · · Score: 2

    the human kind

    1. Re:China already selectively eliminates females by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      SEX RATIO (MALE(S)/FEMALE) - at birth:
      India: 1.12
      China: 1.11

      I am skeptical about these figures. Many people have an interest in covering up this problem. In China, there is also a lot of cover up in the other direction, from parents that had a daughter, and didn't report the birth, so they could later have a son as their "one child". Often times these girls are raised in the countryside by their grandparents, and kept out of school, so the government doesn't know about them.

  3. Sure... by zieroh · · Score: 2

    What could possibly go wrong?

    --
    People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
  4. Re:Jurassic Park by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    He's not your guy, buddy.

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  5. The new all-male mosquito population... by SailorSpork · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...shall be called Brosquitoes.

  6. Re:The church won't like that! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

    They're not Gay. They're one of the other letters in that GBLTQ dealie.