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Medicine Science

Mosquitoes Genetically Modified To Crash Species That Spreads Malaria (npr.org) 248

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a controversial new kind of genetic engineering can rapidly spread a self-destructive genetic modification through a complex species. The scientists used the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to engineer mosquitoes with a "gene drive," which rapidly transmitted a sterilizing mutation through other members of the mosquito's species. After mosquitoes carrying the mutation were released into cages filled with unmodified mosquitoes in a high-security basement laboratory in London, virtually all of the insects were wiped out, according to a report in Nature Biotechnology. The mosquitoes were created in the hopes of using them as a potent new weapon in the long, frustrating fight against malaria. Malaria remains one of the world's deadliest diseases, killing more than 400,000 people every year, mostly children younger than 5 years old. What's encouraging is that the mosquitos reportedly did not appear to further mutate in a way that would diminish the effectiveness of the engineered mutation. "But the researchers stressed that many years of additional research are needed to further test the safety and effectiveness of the approach before anyone attempts to release these mosquitos or any other organisms created this way into the wild," reports NPR.
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Mosquitoes Genetically Modified To Crash Species That Spreads Malaria

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  • by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Monday September 24, 2018 @10:35PM (#57371370)

    It worked well with cane toads in Australia.

    They even provide entertainment for the locals, swerving their cars all over the road to see how many they can pop.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 24, 2018 @10:43PM (#57371390)

      >> Why not just introduce another species to eat them.

      Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
      Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
      Skinner: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
      Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
      Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
      Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
      Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

    • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

      It worked well with cane toads in Australia.

      Sarcasm? Because cane toads were a spectacular failure - they didn't eat the pets sitting on top the cane, but devoured native species on the ground.

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        It worked well with cane toads in Australia.

        Sarcasm? Because cane toads were a spectacular failure - they didn't eat the pets sitting on top the cane, but devoured native species on the ground.

        Since you're unfamiliar with the ancient Australian concept of bleeding obvious sarcasm, I shall close the cash drawer at this time, cobber.

  • Caution (Score:2, Interesting)

    While I hate mosquitoes, I would suggest caution. Mosquitoes are important in the food chain. If one species of mosquitoes are wiped out, would other insects fill the void? We need to think carefully about the ramifications of this. Of course, reducing the damage and death caused by malaria would be highly beneficial.
    • Re: Caution (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Wow, you sound like every compliance, information security, or risk consultant idiot out there.

      Well, you see, this is either good or bad but I have no opinion on it, and I consider this a successful meeting.

      • Re: Caution (Score:5, Informative)

        by Cipheron ( 4934805 ) on Monday September 24, 2018 @11:19PM (#57371478)

        Well, no, it's a perfectly sensible thing to worry about. For example in Communist China, Mao encouraged everyone to wipe out sparrows because sparrows are a filthy nuisance and they eat crop seeds. So they did that, a government-driven program to eliminate sparrows. Yay, no more sparrows mucking the place up. Except, it turned out that sparrow ate a lot more insects than they did seeds, and after that China started to be beset with locust plagues which actually did wreck agriculture and millions starved to death. They then had to go over to Russia and buy sparrows to breed up and release in China to replace them.

        Food chains are in fact pretty delicate things.

        • ... Food chains are in fact pretty delicate things.

          I think flexibility and adaptability could be key. Picture, for example, CRISPR modifications that inadvertently kick humanity down a few rungs on the food chain. Enough to make life "interesting".

        • Re: Caution (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @12:25AM (#57371640)

          For example in Communist China, Mao encouraged everyone to wipe out sparrows

          This is mostly a myth. Mao did indeed order that, but the campaign to "wipe out" the sparrows mostly involved banging pots and waving flags. The theory was that the sparrows would be so frightened that they would die of heart attacks. Does that sound plausible to you? Only a negligible number of sparrows were killed, and although there was a famine, it had nothing to do with sparrows.

          • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @12:35AM (#57371670)

            "To accomplish this task, Chinese citizens were mobilized in massive numbers to eradicate the birds by forcing them to fly until they fell from exhaustion. The Chinese people took to the streets clanging their pots and pans or beating drums to terrorize the birds and prevent them from landing. Nests were torn down, eggs were broken, chicks killed, and sparrows shot down from the sky. Experts estimate that hundreds of millions of sparrows were killed as part of the campaign."

            https://io9.gizmodo.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self-inflicted-disaster-the-campaign-to-wipe-out-the-common-sparrow

            http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20061130_1.htm

            • "To accomplish this task, Chinese citizens were mobilized in massive numbers to eradicate the birds by forcing them to fly until they fell from exhaustion.

              No distinction or difference from his point that that the sparrow "eradication" campaign consisted of....making loud noises. In either case, it's funny that you're attacking SB here when he's an anacho-capitliast.

        • Mao encouraged everyone to wipe out sparrows (...)

          Not only sparrows, mosquitoes too... (RTFWA [wikipedia.org]). And indeed eliminating sparrows happened to be a bad idea. But they said nothing about mosquitoes ... "The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows resulted in severe ecological imbalance". So, wiping out mosquitoes was maybe a good idea.

        • Re: Caution (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @12:30AM (#57371654)

          Mosquitoes are not a natural part of many food chains. For instance, before the arrival of Europeans, there were no mosquitoes in Hawaii. Same for many other islands in Polynesia.

          If the mosquitoes in Hawaii were wiped out, it would be restoring the food chain to its more natural state, and would likely help native species against invaders.

          • Just because a species isn't native to a region doesn't mean that its removal after it's had hundreds of years to become part of the ecosystem won't have an impact.
        • My biggest worry is the ability to kill off a species of animal so easily, from the sounds of it. Where will it stop? Hey, this is a nuisance, that is a nuisance, kill 'em all. Next thing you know, we have pigs, cows, chickens, and humans left.

          To your post, yep. And mosquitoes pollinate plants... of which we eat. The honey business only talks about bees as pollinators, but a lot of flying bugs are.

          And I just read somewhere some bat species eat thousands of mosquitoes a night. Certainly other small animals l

      • Re: Caution (Score:4, Interesting)

        by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @12:19AM (#57371626)
        It's not that simple. There is a huge insects decline [theguardian.com] everywhere, mostly in developed countries, except mosquitoes (they don't rely much on other insects, and love human proximity). In countries where malaria is a problem, the idea is to get rid of only one (maybe a couple of) mosquito breed(s), the ones that transmit the disease. That shouldn't have an important impact on the ecosystem there.
    • You're worrying about the wrong thing.
      The real problem will be the giant mosquitos they will wind up breeding that will murder everyone.
      I saw it in this documentary. [imdb.com]
    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Monday September 24, 2018 @11:09PM (#57371450) Journal

      That is of course something to be very careful about.
      Because it is, multiple teams have studied the issue thoroughly and there seems to be broad agreement that eliminating the specific species responsible for most malaria would have very little ecological impact at all. There are plenty of other mosquito species (and other insects) to fill the niche. There are over 3,000 species of mosquito, only three (0.1%) cause most disease.

      A key there is something like chemical pesticides wouldn't typically target just the species. Hence the search for a very targetted approach.

      • A key there is something like chemical pesticides wouldn't typically target just the species. Hence the search for a very targetted approach.

        What we need is a way to target only mosquitoes that carry malaria. Surely we can crispr up a malaria-HIV hybrid virus that gives them skeeter-aids. Maybe throw in some polio for good measure.

        • What we need is a way to target only mosquitoes that carry malaria

          uh... that's what they do actually.

    • by bongey ( 974911 )

      Actually no, removing mosquitoes from earth would not harm any other species. I cannot find the source at the moment but the gist of it is mosquitoes do far more harm and there are plenty of other bugs to make up any loss of a food source. It is the only species that has been shown removing mosquitoes hurts nothing.

    • Actually no. I've read a couple of articles by biologists, who are convinced that mosquitoes could disappear and not be missed. Anything that eats them also eats lots of other insects.

      Well, OK, the malaria parasite would miss them...

      • Agree 100%. They've yet to find any animal or species that eats mosquitoes exclusively. Let's wipe out all blood sucking/biting mosquitoes.
    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @06:11AM (#57372308)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • While I hate mosquitoes, I would suggest caution. Mosquitoes are important in the food chain. If one species of mosquitoes are wiped out, would other insects fill the void? We need to think carefully about the ramifications of this. Of course, reducing the damage and death caused by malaria would be highly beneficial.

      It is inconclusive at the moment what long term effect will be, this is something they have done studies on before though.

      Mosquitos (and more often their larvae) ARE major source foods for a lot of species- but nothing eats only mosquitos. In areas where mosquitos have been wiped out by chemical means, there was no noticed damage to the rest of the food chain due to no mosquitos as food. (this wasn't long term studies though because Mosquitos always return eventually).

      In studies that have been done, it is

    • This argument comes up all the time. Are there other biting, annoying, disease carrying insects that are as prevalent as mosquitoes? When I'm sitting outside, mosquitoes are the only things that come bite me. Are you saying some other insect will evolve specifically to draw blood from humans where no other existed?

      Mosquitoes should all die. Mankind will take our chances.
      • Horse flies for example. And their bite is pretty nasty. I'd take mosquitoes over horse flies any day.

    • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      While I hate mosquitoes, I would suggest caution. Mosquitoes are important in the food chain. If one species of mosquitoes are wiped out, would other insects fill the void? We need to think carefully about the ramifications of this. Of course, reducing the damage and death caused by malaria would be highly beneficial.

      This is what I love about slashdot. Someone comes up with a question in less than 15 minutes. They are so sure that the question has not been tought of or asked, even by people who have been

    • by flink ( 18449 )

      While I hate mosquitoes, I would suggest caution. Mosquitoes are important in the food chain. If one species of mosquitoes are wiped out, would other insects fill the void? We need to think carefully about the ramifications of this. Of course, reducing the damage and death caused by malaria would be highly beneficial.

      We obliterate species casually and without much thought all the time for no better reason than we want to clear some forest for lumber, or drain a swamp for a new mall, or demolish a mountain for some minerals. In this instance we'd be doing it deliberately to a few species in a genus that has thousands of members and which is not crucial to any food chain as far as we can discern, and we'd be saving millions of human lives by doing so.

    • How about breeding mosquitoes that are not carriers for Malaria? Or that don't target humans? Having the bats and birds die because we killed their main food source seems like a bad idea.
  • by El Cubano ( 631386 ) on Monday September 24, 2018 @10:48PM (#57371404)

    You know how sometimes you read something kooky and you say to yourself, "wow, this person watches too many SciFi/spy/etc. movies."? (That happens a fair bit here on Slashdot).

    This article is evidently a case of "wow, these people do not watch nearly enough SciFi/spy/etc. movies."

    Oh well. I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.

    • Right?

      You can practically read the synopsis now... "The sterilizing gene drive was only supposed to target other mosquitos. At first, it worked brilliantly. Malaria rates plummeted worldwide. But then a random mutation in the wild allowed it to target other species..."

      BRB, writing "Mosquito's Revenge"

  • They're playing with things when they don't fully understand the consequences. I get that's how we learn, but you don't get an undo button
    with this. You do it wrong and the consequences will be epic.

    While we pretty much universally dislike mosquitoes, they do play a part in a larger ecosystem that all we ( as a species ) have managed to do is fuck it up.
    Disrupt it and you risk a cascading effect which can have consequences far beyond what we can predict or plan for.

    It doesn't take a whole lot of imaginati

  • There are all sorts of things that munch on mosquito's. If you kill the mosquito's, there will be other species that have issues. Everything from the mosquito eggs to the full grown adult, are eaten by other creatures.

    Ten dead mosquito's, per cubic meter, ads up to a lot of biomass.

    --
    In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. - Charles Darwin

         

    • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Monday September 24, 2018 @11:41PM (#57371516) Homepage Journal

      That's why they're aiming at a small subset of mosquitos rather than the entire family.

    • There are all sorts of things that munch on mosquito's. If you kill the mosquito's, there will be other species that have issues. Everything from the mosquito eggs to the full grown adult, are eaten by other creatures.

      Ten dead mosquito's, per cubic meter, ads up to a lot of biomass.

      --
      In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. - Charles Darwin

      Nothing relies heavily on mosquitos for food though. A lot of things eat mosquitos but there is no species that eats ONLY mosquitos. Also, just eliminating species that target humans (a small %) will allow more human-friendly mosquitos to fill the role.

      In all the many studies that have been done on this- none have shown mosquitos to be ecologically important to any other species. In fact- mosquitos are regularly wiped out in localized areas using chemical means to control spread of disease and no "food c

    • Baby dragonflies feast almost exclusively on baby mosquitoes. If you kill all the mosquitoes you will likely kill all the dragonflies. Adult dragonflies are an apex predator in the insect world and there are likely a lot of bugs that dragonflies eat that we wouldn't want more of.

      • by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @08:42AM (#57372698)

        Baby dragonflies feast almost exclusively on baby mosquitoes. If you kill all the mosquitoes you will likely kill all the dragonflies. Adult dragonflies are an apex predator in the insect world and there are likely a lot of bugs that dragonflies eat that we wouldn't want more of.

        Not almost exclusively. It is certainly a portion of their diet (as it is for many species). They get more nutrition from tadpoles, cadis fly larvae, baby fish, daphnia, ostropods, planaria, snails, and all sorts of other micro fauna. Mosquito larvae is just a part of their diet. They're also not particular about the species of mosquito. Only a small percentage of mosquito species bite people. You could wipe out the dangerous mosquitos and leave "human-friendly" ones alone- so their larvae and adults alike can be consumed.

    • Well, clearly what needs to be done is to tweak the appetite of those eating mosquitoes to want.. MOAR!!

  • Humans have a history of accepting new technology before all the issues are fully understood.

    Scary joke: Maybe those mosquitoes will escape the attempt to eliminate them through genetic modification that occurs naturally. May they will become as large as eagles and need to drink all of the blood of a human every day.
  • by ooloorie ( 4394035 ) on Monday September 24, 2018 @11:48PM (#57371534)

    The mosquitoes were created in the hopes of using them as a potent new weapon in the long, frustrating fight against malaria. Malaria remains one of the world's deadliest diseases, killing more than 400,000 people every year, mostly children younger than 5 years old.

    All other unintended ecological consequences aside, mosquitoes and malaria are the main factor that makes wide areas of Africa effectively uninhabitable. Controlling them will lead to widespread deforestation, massive population growth, and probably result in famine and political upheavals. I'm not passing judgment on whether it should or shouldn't be done, but this is another example of Western technology radically altering developing nations, and I'm afraid the West will get blamed for the consequences again.

  • The scientists used the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to engineer humans with a "gene drive," which rapidly transmitted a sterilizing mutation through other members of the human's species. After humans carrying the mutation were released into cages filled with unmodified humans in a high-security basement laboratory in London, virtually all of the humans were wiped out

    • Difference is that 1) mosquitoes have fewer neurons and don't even know what happens to them, 2) at last, efficient birth control for humans!
  • London seems like a bad place to do experiments like this.
    Antarctica would seem like a much better place as there is much less chance of an escape causing havoc.

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens. -- Bengamin Disraeli

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