Feeding an Appetite-Suppressing Human Drug To Mosquitos Make Them Lose Their Attraction To Blood By Around 80%: Study (nature.com)

From Nature magazine: Female Aedes aegypti, like other mosquito species, feed on blood to get the protein they need to produce their eggs, and spread diseases such as dengue in the process. But once the mosquitoes have had their blood fix, they stop biting until they've laid their eggs several days later. Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, wondered whether she could hijack this biological process to switch off a mosquito's appetite.

Previous research had suggested that a mosquito's desire to feed is controlled by neuropeptides, molecules used by the nervous system to communicate. Vosshall and her team suspected that neuropeptide Y (NPY) receptors might be particularly important, because they form part of the molecular pathway involved in food-seeking behaviour for many animals -- including humans. Some human appetite-suppressant drugs already target the NPY receptors, so Vosshall decided to take a "completely zany" approach: feed these drugs to mosquitoes and see what happens. The method worked: mosquitoes that fed on a solution containing NPY-activating drugs were much less likely to approach a human-scented 'lure' than were the control group, and their appetites remained suppressed for two days. Further reading: A New Way to Keep Mosquitoes From Biting.

Comments

Bah

[sunking2]

Feeding them poison reduces it 100%

Re:Bah

[ShanghaiBill]

Feeding them poison reduces it 100%

... until they develop resistance. But they would have strong selective pressure to develop resistance to the appetite suppressor as well.

Re:Bah

[sunking2]

Not sure you understand how 100% fatality works...

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

We should use CRISPR to create a version of the mosquito that gets the protein from some source other than blood. Make them more fertile and with stronger mate-attraction characteristics than the existing mosquitoes, and release them into the wild.

Then they will still be there to feed frogs and what-not, but they won't be giving us diseases. It's a win-win.

Re:Bah

[Phytophthora]

Feeding them poison reduces it 100%

Wrong... Feeding them poison reduces it 99.99999% - which can result in an in-sensitive population under the right conditions.

Re:Bah

[ShanghaiBill]

Not sure you understand how 100% fatality works...

Not sure if you understand that in the real world, no poison is 100% fatal, especially against a widely dispersed and hardy critter like Aedes aegypti. They range across millions of square miles of the tropics, and can breed in an upturned bottle cap.

Re:Bah

[Bourdain]

maybe so but check out this...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...

i.e., even when, frighteningly, a LOT of insects have died off, the ecosystem is still okay seemingly?

I would guess if we killed off all of the aedes aegypti, trophic compression would solve the problem sufficiently

Re:Bah

[onepoint]

While I feel you are trolling, some others might think you are serious.

by letting a natural genetic mutation work might be fine, and other critters might be able to deal with it, but a hand made mutation might have a chain impact on more than one creature.

what I wonder is this, how many mosquitoes are needed to make a bat not interested in eating for a day or two.

I prefer a simple increase the bat population and also use those laser beams that were made for this, back about 5 or 10 years ago, someone made a track and destroy beam against mosquitoes, but I think it went nowhere. sadly that would be the best defense at the home, with the least amount of issues for nature.

I don't think natural selection is going to make an armored covered mosquito.

Re: Bah

[plopez]

citation?

Re: Bah

[jouassou]

I'm not the AC above, but they probably thought about this one.

I still prefer the laser solution

[bobstreo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[alvinrod]

In case anyone wasn't aware of these yet, the videos demonstrating how they work are pretty damn cool. Here's one that has slow motion captures of such a laser in action. It doesn't have any audio, but the whole thing is even more awesome if you open a video playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in another tab.

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anyone wasn't aware of these yet, the videos demonstrating how they work are pretty damn cool. Here's one that has slow motion captures of such a laser in action. It doesn't have any audio, but the whole thing is even more awesome if you open a video playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in another tab.

KILL DA WABBIT!

KILL DA WABBIT!

Yeah, I was the one in the movie theater years ago who couldn't prevent myself from shouting, "Kill da wabbit! Kill da wabbit!" in an Elmer Fudd voice at the appropriate time in a showing of Apocalypse Now!

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[mark-t]

That's something I miss about modern movie going... there is less audience participation. I don't mean the rehearsed participation like what you get with Rocky Horror... I mean the real world, improvised stuff that is so perfect at the moment that it forever alters your experience of the film, even when you watch it at home years or decades later.

Today, they kick people out of the theatre for that kind of stuff.

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[Locke2005]

They still do it in heavily African-American neighborhoods. My favorite story is about watching The Exorcist, and when Linda Blair was floating up in the air, someone shouted in a Don Pardo voice, "Come on down!"

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[mark-t]

We're getting OT here, but I can't resist relating the funniest one that happened in a theatre I was in. We were seeing Return of the Jedi when it came out, and the scene near the end where the Emperor is trying to convince Luke that his situation is hopeless and to surrender, he proclaims "Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational battle-station!", and then to his communicator he says, "Fire at will commander", there is brief shot of the fleet in space just before the cannon is fired and someone in the audience shouts out "Which one is Will?", raising audible laughter in the crowd just as the first rebellion's ship is destroyed.

I cannot watch the movie today without that line being inserted in my brain as the cannon is firing.

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[mark-t]

In my experience, I never heard more than one outburst in any given movie. Hardly an MST situation.

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[onepoint]

thank you, I was wondering where this was.

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[plopez]

My line was in the Two Towers movie when the elves show up at helm's deep (Elves at helm's deep? WTF?) in a loud voice and bad german accent "Ya, vee haf left our German Industrial band to help you!"

Re:I still prefer the laser solution

[Quirkz]

"Which one's Will?"

Oddly, I point to that same joke as the moment I decided I was too old for cartoons. I used to be a big G.I. Joe fan for a few years, but they went on hiatus for a while. A few years later I caught a new episode for about 30 seconds, where the above joke was delivered.

"Man," I said to myself, "Was it always this bad and I just didn't notice?" Then I turned it off.

Humor is situational, of course. Unprompted Jedi heckling, I could it see it working. Scripted in a terrorist assault, not so much.

Yeah, but what happens when they develop immunity?

[rsilvergun]

Then you've got freakin' mosquitoes with lazers on their heads. Betcha didn't think about that. Checkmate.

Welcome to the next phase of pollution

[holophrastic]

We had water pollution in lakes, wells, and now oceans.
We had air pollution and atmospheric pollution in ozone layers and smog.
We had ground pollution in land-fills and dumps and litter.
We had carbon pollution and carbon footprints.
We had radiation pollution in nuclear disasters.
We had light pollution.
We had noise pollution.

And now, now we're inventing bio pollution.

Save the whales, save the dolphins, save the apes, save the birds. Screw up the mosquitoes?

So the mosquitoes won't be hungry.
And the birds will eat the mosquitoes.
And the birds won't be hungry.
And the frogs won't be hungry.
And the fish won't be hungry.

Then no one will lay any eggs.

Am I the only one who feels like maybe we shouldn't be destroying what little wildlife we have left? You know, at the genetic level?

Re:Welcome to the next phase of pollution

[Locke2005]

It's called "The Law of Unintended Consequences". Google it.

Re:Welcome to the next phase of pollution

[holophrastic]

You're mistaken. This consequence is very much intended. They want to reduce the mosquito population.

That's the problem. Forget what-happens-next. They already have it wrong.

What they really want is to stop mosquitoes from biting humans. That has absolutely nothing to do with killing mosquitoes.

Actually, I take that back. That too is too far. What they really want is to stop mosquitoes from spreading diseases to humans.

Again, absolutely nothing to do with the mosquito population.

It's not a "consequence" when it's the direct result of what you're doing. That's called cause and effect.

I don't want them to stop biting.

[Java Pimp]

I just want them to stop biting me.

There are other organisms (bats, spiders) that kinda like mosquitos for dinner. Probably shouldn't do something likely to kill them off.

Re:I don't want them to stop biting.

[HiThere]

Actually, only a small minority of kinds of mosquito target humans. And so far experiments haven't demonstrated ANY harm in totally removing mosquitoes from an eco-system. Now admittedly, all the tests have been on small islands.

My real question would be "What happens when they evolve to be resistant to this approach?", because one obvious possibility is that they don't only bite when they get hungry.

Re:I don't want them to stop biting.

[CaptainDork]

So let's solve the real problem: Genetically engineer pest-resistant humans.

Neat idea, not entirely novel though

[pi_rules]

Stopping an insect from feeding to reduce damage to crops isn't unheard of in agriculture. IRAC groups 9 and 29 are chemicals that stop feeding of target insects. Generally this results in mortality after a while but they tend to stop feeding/damaging the crop shortly after application.

Not trying to rain on their parade or anything. The general idea isn't new but this specific mode of action on this target appears to be totally new. Kinda cool.

Stupid question:

[Locke2005]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to slap the little bastards into oblivion than to feed them diet pills?

Re:I know what to do

[Locke2005]

I've always wondered why they stopped selling products with names like "AIDS"...

Better Idea

[ememisya]

I suggest cyclopentolate. One drop on each eye and the mosquito will not be able to see where it's going for several hours.

Obligatory pun

[TimMD909]

I'm sure this news really sucks for mosquitos...

Fake blood?

[HaaPoo]

Same as many vampire movies, why do not we develop fake blood that taste better than human blood, and setup feeding stations for them. They may leave us alone.

And then if you want to lose weight...

[rv6502]

... just stop using mosquito repellent.

They're pollinators

[plopez]

Let's just kill all pollinators. Great idea there.

Quoting my own church...

[BadTuna]

There shall be no such measure that does not provide millions upon one or two of my disciples.
John 3:16