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Biotech Medicine

Sex-Switched Mosquitoes May Help In Fight Against Diseases 150

Posted by samzenpus 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.
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Sex-Switched Mosquitoes May Help In Fight Against Diseases More

Sex-Switched Mosquitoes May Help In Fight Against Diseases

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  • 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?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by aliquis ( 678370 )

      Same reason some people don't think we should kill all snakes, sharks, humans, crocodiles, tigers, ..

      But sure. Kill all humans. Be done with it. Nothing to fear for us or anyone else from humans.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Intrepid imaginaut ( 1970940 )

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

        Some bugs just need to die.

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by aliquis ( 678370 )

          Can't that be said for everything?

          Tigers doesn't either. Humans can eat their pray?

          Small snakes can be replaced with .. owls?

          And so on.

          So why bother.

          Same could be said about Christians, Muslims, Americans, French people, vacuum cleaner sellers, McD personal, .. too. Just kill them and let other humans replace them. Why not?

          Guess it doesn't matter that all the extinct animals died because obviously the world carries on anyway.

          Just destroy everything. WTF. Something else will replace it eventually. And reall

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )

            Can't that be said for everything?

            Bees.

          • Re:Why not just kill them all? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Intrepid imaginaut ( 1970940 ) on Monday May 25, 2015 @07:38PM (#49771457)

            Can't that be said for everything?

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

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward

              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 observati

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

                I suspect the niche will be filled by crane flies, which are both edible and harmless. That's what I've observed in the wild already -- one has a population that is predominantly mosquitoes, or predominantly crane flies, without appearing to change much else. Sure, the balance may change at some levels, but wholesale collapse? Not unless something is so narrowly adapted that it feeds ONLY on mosquitoes. Doubtless there are some specialty parasite that would suffer, or have to adapt to a new host. I can't th

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              Mosquito larvae are an important part of the ecosystem of non-circulating water deposits, eating bacteria and protozoa and providing food for dragonfly nymphs and other predators. There is no real replacement for them, and you can't have larvae without adults.

          • Re:Why not just kill them all? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Monday May 25, 2015 @08:00PM (#49771569)
            No. The pressure on deer is different when the wolves are exterminated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

            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.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by narf0708 ( 2751563 )
          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 n
          • If someones excuse for not going on a "nature walk", or even a real damn hiking or camping trip, is mosquitoes, getting rid of the mosquitoes will probably not help. That's just a polite excuse, some people just don't like "sitting in the dirt" as it's been explained to me.

            • Yep. I've come to realize that when you say, "camping", most people immediately think of an RV stuffed with every gadget imaginable cranked up to 11.

              Screw that. I like my hammock, tarp, and wool blankets. It's not for everyone, though. If you don't actually like being outside, then not much is going to change that. RVs are just a way for people to claim that they're "camping" and have a few beers in a different pub than usual.

          • 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.

            Not true. Malaria parasites and yellow fever virus would both be quite upset if mosquitoes were extinct.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Livius ( 318358 )

          Eradicating mosquitoes would undoubtedly have some unforeseen negative ecological dislocations.

          But we're talking about mosquitoes; I'm willing to take the risk.

          • Eradicating mosquitoes would undoubtedly have some unforeseen negative ecological dislocations.

            We don't need to eradicate all mosquitoes. Just the anopheles mosquitoes [wikipedia.org] that transmit malaria. There are plenty of other mosquito species that would be happy to fill their niche.

        • Do we know that with 100% certainty? If not it makes sense to hedge the bet a little.

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

          That is true of almost any species. Such as humans, for example.

      • Go visit Alaska some time [youtube.com] or some other boreal place and your opinion will change VERY rapidly!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kuroji ( 990107 )

      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.

    • Kind of hard to kill them all ... but if you get them to switch from female to male, those mosquitoes won't feed and transmit diseases, and they can't lay eggs.

      • So, that fraction of the species will die off, and the goal wasn't reached. What we should do instead is following: produce female mosquitoes who are pre-filled with blood (e.g. by giving them blood from ), and with a genetic switch so that their offsprings are only male, and release them every year into the wild. Now they will lay their eggs into the water, and will compete with the "normal" mosquitoes, reducing the overall number of female mosquitoes, because the mosquitoes in the eggs are only males. Now

        • This should have been:

          (e.g. by giving them blood from animals)

        • The goal is not to kill off all mosquitoes. Not only is it impossible, but we don't know what some of the side effects will be. We do know that mosquito larvae are a food source for many fish at an early stage of their life cycle, and the fish help keep the mosquito population somewhat under control. Take away all the larvae, you may have fewer fish reaching adulthood.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Whiteox ( 919863 )

        So we get a bunch of gay mosquitos?
        I did hear once that the female's buzz is there to attract males who don't buzz. Unfortunately the males are deaf.
        On a more serious note, the egg, larva and pupa are eaten by fish, frogs, birds, spiders so their absence will be significant. Using genetic switches would only be local and thus effecting the local populations only.

        • No - they develop as males. Males don't bite. So, they can't transmit disease. I don't think this is really a viable solution, though. Say we manage to find a chemical or bio-chemical agent to do the job. Do we really want to introduce it into the environment? The effects would probably be worse than DDT.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by KGIII ( 973947 )

            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.

            • I know. But what can you do ... it's like the anti-nuclear-power gang. If they weren't so .... you know ... we'd have already done the research to fund real nuclear waste recycling instead of just stockpiling it.

              • I know. But what can you do ... it's like the anti-nuclear-power gang. If they weren't so .... you know ... we'd have already done the research to fund real nuclear waste recycling instead of just stockpiling it.

                It brings a tear to my eye when I think of what the 'green' lobby has done to stifle environmental progress. It does seem that they're actually more than happy with the building and operation of coal plants after all.

    • 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.
      • Wow I really messed up the grammar in that one. :P

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

        Yep, but if you can rig things so most females only produce males, you can radically shrink the population. And that would be good enough for a start. Worry about eliminating pocket populations later.

        As to their ecological niche, I've noticed that when there are a lot of crane flies, there are few or no mosquitoes, and v.v. I take this to mean they can more or less substitute. Crane flies are harmless, and just as edible for mosquito predators.

    • 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.

  • the human kind

    • Can we please get a "Dark humour" mod for times like these?

      Also, "Sad truth" would be helpful in some cases.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by antiperimetaparalogo ( 4091871 )

      the human kind

      SEX RATIO (MALE(S)/FEMALE) - at birth:
      India: 1.12
      China: 1.11
      World: 1.07
      E.U.: 1.06
      U.S.A.: 1.05
      source: CIA [cia.gov].

      While there are more male than female births in India and China, the difference from the World's average is not so big as many people may thing (note for the "/." SJW's : i don't support killing females... o.k?!)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nutria ( 679911 )

        the difference from the World's average is not so big as many people may thin(k)

        I'm sure it's not for trying!!

        • the difference from the World's average is not so big as many people may thin(k)

          I'm sure it's not for trying!!

          I like (grammar) NaZi's, and genocides (of orthographic mistakes) - thanks!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Nutria ( 679911 )

            Hey, I didn't say anything -- much less anything nasty -- about that small mistake...

            • Hey dude, I REALLY* LIKE (grammar) NaZi's, AND GENOCIDES (of orthographic mistakes) - and it was not a "small mistake", but a fucking HUGE (thing - think), so i REALLY* THANK YOU!

              * if you read my signature you will understand that i struggle with my English because i am not a native speaker - i think (do you see what YOU did?) most native speakers appreciate corrections.

              • He probably assumed it was a typo and didn't want to upset you by writing (sic) when quoting your post, no need to invoke genocide or nazis.

                Unless you want to, of course.

                • He probably assumed it was a typo and didn't want to upset you by writing (sic) when quoting your post, no need to invoke genocide or nazis.

                  Unless you want to, of course.

                  Well, i want! And if you read the title that exists on your comment you may understand why... you can say i have a bad taste of humor, or that invoking genocides is appropriate enough.

      • Since India + China are half the world's population, they tend to be around the world average on things. Remove them and the rest of the world's average would probably be ~1.05.

        • Since India + China are half the world's population, they tend to be around the world average on things. Remove them and the rest of the world's average would probably be ~1.05.

          That is a good point (i am too tired to do the math now!), but that's why i also posted EU and USA ratios (less suspect for female genocide), so... even from the 1.06 and 1.05 ratio, both India and China are not so far with their 1.12 and 1.11.

          • Of course, when you're talking half the world's population, a few hundredths of a percentage point can make a really big difference in actual numbers...

            • Yes, but when we compare rates between countries and/or the world's average the "actual numbers" MUST BE irrelevant - we discuss "genocides" here, so "even one murdered is too much" sensitivities are... unimportant.

      • 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.

        • 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.

          I am also skeptical, and even those (not so high) numbers i suspect to be exaggerated for the reasons you mention - it is the usual problem with demographic/social/economic/etc statistics: you need a local person to explain why they are wrong!

        • It's probably safe to assume that the CIA doesn't have an interest in furthering China's political agenda.

      • I'm not sure these assumptions are correct, but saying that 1.07 to 1.12 is "not as big as many people may think" is a bit disingenuous. Let's look at the numbers

        Lets assume 1.07 would be their natural ratio. In India it's 1.12. India has a birth rate of around 25 million people a year. The "natural" ratio would lead that to be:

        25m * 1.07/2.07
        12,922,705 males
        12,077,294 females

        Their actual ratio is more like (1.12):

        25m * 1.12/2.12
        13,207,547 males
        11,792,452 females

        Female birth number should be assuming a

        • Just to make it clear, since i was the one posted the ratios and stated "not as big as many people may think" (i don't want you to think i approve "genocides"): i compare rates (between countries), so the actual numbers (of female babies) are irrelevant - the actual female babies are important. but...

  • Sure... (Score:3)

    by zieroh ( 307208 ) on Monday May 25, 2015 @06:28PM (#49771029)

    What could possibly go wrong?

    • What could possibly go wrong?

      Normally, the implication of that question is that there are a bunch of blindingly obvious problems which are being blithely overlooked.

      So, what are they?

  • Scientists, making gay mosquitoes on purpose?

  • Anyway, sex switching is the future. There is no reason anyone should be stuck with a sex arbitrarily chosen by nature. Everyone should be able to pick and choose whatever is best for them at any given moment in their life. Thankfully at least the Irish people have the insight to understand this.

    • There is no reason anyone should be stuck with a sex arbitrarily chosen by nature. Everyone should be able to pick and choose whatever is best for them at any given moment in their life.

      Um, there's a very good reason people should be, and are, stuck with the sex arbitrarily chosen for them by nature: we simply don't have the technology to change it. No, cosmetic surgery doesn't count, it's just a poor attempt at making someone appear to be the opposite sex. To actually change someone's sex, you'd have to

      • All that said, in purely biological terms there's some people that don't fit the standard definition, let alone the more stringent sporting definitions (eg. the athlete in the 1970s who failed to test as genetically female but has given birth twice without any artificial assistance), so it's nowRe:I thought Nix was only for lice!?here near as sharply defined or simple as you suggest.

        but you still can't do stuff like change the shoulder-to-waist ratio, hand and foot sizes, etc

        All statistical. Apart from bod

  • The new all-male mosquito population... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SailorSpork ( 1080153 ) on Monday May 25, 2015 @06:57PM (#49771195) Homepage
    ...shall be called Brosquitoes.

  • I used to disagree with the philosophy of the laser zapping mosquito killer...

    The information gathered by the non-lethal laser can be used to determine the type of insect, and even its gender because wing beat patterns are unique to each species and gender. This is important in preventing malaria because only female mosquitoes bite humans

    But now... if we switch them all to female first, THEN zap them... I can agree.

  • for one, welcomes our trannie mosquito porn.
  • Nix, like the Greek goddess of infernal night?

  • ... just stay in their parent's basement, looking at /b/.

  • Yeah, I can see some kind of Jurassic Park scenario playing out when they try this, and with our luck it will occur in Winnipeg, which is renowned for the size, voracity and general thuggishness of its female mosquito population.

    I have little doubt we'll wind up with packs of mosquitoes sporting flannel shirts, Doc Martens and schnozz spikes the size of a rhino horn, along with the general demeanor of a Conservative whose wife just left him for an environmentalist.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

      Ah yes, the land of twin-engine mosquitoes...

      Q: What does a tundra mosquito call a bus full of kids?
      A: Sardines!!

      • ROFL! Sorry I didn't answer sooner. Great joke!

        Cheers!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

          We just started our mosquito season here... so far they're just little gliders, but the dive-bombers will be along in a bit.

  • I wonder if this would be any more effective than the GMO mosquitoes developed by Oxitec. It's a fascinating technology - the mosquitoes are modified to have a "dominant lethal" allele that can be suppressed by feeding the mosquitoes tetracycline. They raise a generation of mosquitoes with access to tetracycline, separate out the males, and release them into the wild, where they breed with wild females. All their offspring die during the larval phase. The release plan usually overwhelms the local wild male

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