Transgenic Mosquitoes Transferred Their Genes Into a Natural Population (nature.com) 79
Long-time Slashdot reader cccc828 shares a Nature article "about genetically modified mosquitoes that were supposed to reduce the mosquito population. However, instead of dying, some survived, spreading the new genes."
In an attempt to control the mosquito-borne diseases yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika fevers, a strain of transgenically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes containing a dominant lethal gene has been developed by a commercial company, Oxitec Ltd... Approximately 450 thousand males of this strain were released each week for 27 months in Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil...
Genetic sampling from the target population six, 12, and 27-30 months after releases commenced provides clear evidence that portions of the transgenic strain genome have been incorporated into the target population. Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature... It is unclear how this may affect disease transmission or affect other efforts to control these dangerous vectors.
These results highlight the importance of having in place a genetic monitoring program during such releases to detect un-anticipated outcomes.
In an attempt to control the mosquito-borne diseases yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika fevers, a strain of transgenically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes containing a dominant lethal gene has been developed by a commercial company, Oxitec Ltd... Approximately 450 thousand males of this strain were released each week for 27 months in Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil...
Genetic sampling from the target population six, 12, and 27-30 months after releases commenced provides clear evidence that portions of the transgenic strain genome have been incorporated into the target population. Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature... It is unclear how this may affect disease transmission or affect other efforts to control these dangerous vectors.
These results highlight the importance of having in place a genetic monitoring program during such releases to detect un-anticipated outcomes.
No Shit Sherlock (Score:2, Insightful)
You put the challenge to Nature, FFS.
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Very nice reply, thanks. Though traitors will have trouble understanding such concepts, hopefully most will not.
Re: Tired of this bullshit argument. (Score:2)
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Before there were trees, the tallest forms of life were shrubs, basically, or grasses
Just to clarify, trees (over 30m) are thought to have evolved 360 million years ago, grasses only about 60 million. So there were no grasses before trees.
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I know it’s fashionable nowadays to have a full keg of guilt on tap
Disappointingly, it's also fashionable to write long and self-righteous arguments against a claim that was only made by a straw man. The parent was saying that humans deserve to go extinct because we're killing ourselves, it was not about guilt. The means by which we're killing ourselves is: by killing everything else, we're destroying the environment that we depend on to live. "Nature will win" because we need nature in order to survive, and we "deserve to go extinct" because that's the end result of our a
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Actually we are not beating nature, we are setting ourselves up for extinction. In the end nature will win because of it. Of all the species of life on this planet there is no one life that deserves to go extinct than humans.
No, there is one, humans who are bad at grammar.
Re: No Shit Sherlock (Score:2)
Pesky outcomes! (Score:4, Insightful)
You can try, you can minimize the un-anticipated outcomes, etc. but you will never get rid of them completely. We're not smart enough to do that. Look at software.
40 Years people are trying to figure out all the possible outcomes, and account for all of them
Anyway... let's hope one day they don't genetically modify a mosquito that will end up evolving, spreading the genes, and then instead of giving people malaria, give them something much worse because whoever is doing this, does not fully understand what he's doing yet. "unintended consequence".
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You can try, you can minimize the un-anticipated outcomes, etc. but you will never get rid of them completely. We're not smart enough to do that. Look at software.
Yes? Is there anyone who doesn't know this? I don't know why so many people think everyone who works in genetic biotech is some maniacal megalomaniac with a god complex who has never heard the term 'unintended consequences,' although I suspect one too many monster movies has something to do with it.
Nothing works 100%, everything has the possibility of having negative drawbacks, you still can't falsify the unknown. Everyone is well aware of that. It doesn't mean you never do anything.
If someone has a r
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Okay, but if there's a reasonable likelihood of an outcome, and it's a necessary side-effect of the desired primary effect, it shouldn't be treated as an exception: it should be treated as normal behavior, and accounted for as such in the design.
This isn't a case of unforseeable consequences.
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Those who dabble in genetic biotech need to be much more careful and go back to controlled environments. Once you release something in nature you can never put it back in the box.
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I don't know why so many people think everyone who works in genetic biotech is some maniacal megalomaniac with a god complex
Maybe cause so many of them appear to be exactly that? Its a well known fact certain fields and certain projects attract certain personalities.
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Yes? Is there anyone who doesn't know this?
The scientists who work for Oxitec Ltd., at a minimum.
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>let's hope one day they don't genetically modify a mosquito that will end up evolving, spreading the genes, and then instead of giving people malaria, give them something much worse because
Malaria has killed 50% of the global human population, throughout history. It was pretty bad, and still is. And nothing prevents a worse thing for showing up for no reason. Having automated needle-sharing on wings is a massive health risk.
The risk of killing large portions of a population is that the population immune
You IDIOTS. (Score:2)
There's no fucking way anyone can predict what the long-term consequences of this are. For all they know they've now inadvertedly created a genetically superior super-mosquito that'll be tougher or impossible to get rid of, a superior spreader of disease, literally the opposite of what was intended.
Instead of a butterfly flapping it's wings that wipes out human civilization and perhaps humanity itself, it might well be the flapping of a mosquitos' wings that destroys everyt
Re:You IDIOTS. (Score:4, Insightful)
Genetic engineering has been used to cook up so many stupid movies where the dumb arrogant egghead scientist dismisses the 'obvious concerns' of the every-man protagonist for so long that people actually think that is how things work. There is a wide margin between "This does not work 100%" and "This is of no benefit and radically dangerous." Want to know what could go wrong? How about mosquito born diseases? I don't think we should do nothing because you can never truly know the outcomes of a thing until you already do it. That's a wholly unreasonable standard.
There's a difference between data and disaster.
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Depends on definition of "super". Excessive use of DDT resulted in strains of super mosquitoes that are resistant to DDT. Lots of stories about super bugs that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Then there's hybrids, is the mule a super horse?
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A single mule is better than a single horse for some purposes. Breeding isn't one of them.
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Funny, but more people are volunteering themselves to be treated, now that survival rates for those treated by well-equipped facilities are upwards of 50%. When even half the people who walk in, eventually walk out rather than being burned in back, then the public starts being more accepting.
Drug-resistant malaria is a way better weapon than Ebola, because it takes so long to treat and is so debilitating, sometimes for years. If you're trying to soften up a population to make them easier to subjugate, malar
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Gee! Nobody saw that coming, did they? (Score:1)
Guess we better fund another study...
Had to be said (Score:2)
Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature
Life, uh, found a way.
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But the new breed is more genetically consistent, and therefore potentially easier to target for the next round.
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Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature
Life, uh, found a way.
Giant people draining mosquito in mirror is closer than it appears.
Unintelligent Design (Score:2)
Trying is still better (Score:5, Insightful)
than throwing up your hands and saying "we can't do anything".
We never would have come out from our caves if that were the case.
People talk about the "precautionary principle", but that is just an excuse for doing nothing, because pretty much anything can have unintended consequences.
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It's pretty much agreed that mosquitos can be eradicated without any environmental harm.
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It's pretty much agreed that mosquitos can be eradicated without any environmental harm.
It's pretty much agreed that you're mistaken.
No one can know exactly what would happen if we got rid of mosquitoes everywhere. It theoretically would open up room for other insects, and researchers hypothesize those might pose a public health threat as well. We can also think of mosquitoes as great defenders of Earth’s rainforests. Mosquitoes make rainforests nearly uninhabitable by humans, greatly reducing man-made development in these areas.
~ Science writer David Quammen
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Besides, considering how the hundreds of species humans have already wiped out hasn't ended the world yet, I highly doubt that one more is what triggers the eco-apocalypse. Species have been going extinct for as long as there's been life; if the environment was that fragile, we wouldn't be here.
Re: Trying is still better (Score:2)
I think it is a safe assumption that the Brazilian environment can do well enough without them.
Is it? That environment needed much less protection from pre-industrial humans.
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No one can know exactly what would happen if we got rid of mosquitoes everywhere. It theoretically would open up room for other insects, and researchers hypothesize those might pose a public health threat as well.
How best to deal with competing hypothesis? Everybody has one.
We can also think of mosquitoes as great defenders of Earth’s rainforests. Mosquitoes make rainforests nearly uninhabitable by humans, greatly reducing man-made development in these areas.
Bad, bad humans!
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I think you mean that some species of mosquito could be eradicated without much environmental harm. Lots of harmless (to humans) species of mosquito out there and they're an important food source for various species.
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There are many fish species - especially in South America - that love mosquito larvae. They are even uses for fighting mosquitoes.
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I was thinking more of fish, especially hatchlings as well as some insects such as dragon flies, both adult and nymph.
Some mosquitoes are also pollinators.
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It's pretty much agreed that in some environments some species of mosquitoes have been eradicated without any noticeable harm to any other species.
This isn't quite what you are asserting, but it's the true version. Anything stronger is going beyond the evidence.
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Except this is like "trying" to jump off a 50 story building. It's obviously a dumb idea from the get-go.
Wiping out (or at least seriously depleting) disease carrying mosquitoes is a laudable goal.
Your alternative suggestions would no doubt be welcome.
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Enlighten the rest of us, what specifically about this is such a dumb idea, and by specifically I don't mean the tired 'We don't know everything so don't do anything!' line, I want details, and what should people be doing instead to address the very real issue of mosquito borne pathogens?
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So of course, the precautionary principle is mostly a political tool to motivate the scientifically illiterate. Of course, those who oppose genetic engineering an
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Mandatory Jurassic Park reference (Score:2)
This is why Bill Gates is responsible for the Zika (Score:1)
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you are full of nonsense
The percent of infected mosquitos has risen 30 times what it was over a period of half a century. Recent experiments aren't to blame.
Any recent infections would have happened anyway and maybe would have been worse.
No basis for law suit, since they didn't cause infections
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In words of Dr. Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park (Score:2)
Life finds a way!
What do the genes do? (Score:3)
"Sufficiently robust to reproduce" doesn't exactly fill me with fear. Are they in any way superior to the target version of the mosquito? From the summary my guess is that they aren't. (Do note this is a guess.)
My *guess* is that they are barely robust enough to survive, and will quickly disappear over the generations. But I'll wait for an article to appear in the popular science news to form a real opinion. (Articles in Nature generally leave me either confused or dazed in incomprehension.) N.B.: even articles on programming that are academic and distant from application get the same response. I've never bothered to figure out what a Floyd grammar is.
Clever girl! (Score:2)
Wipe them out? (Score:1)
To wipe out the mosquito is very hard to impossible.
Instead we should look for genetic modifications that result in mosquitoes that cannot carry nasty diseases, ideally engineered to outcompete disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Getting rid of malaria would be a very good thing to do!
Needs a 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' tag (Score:2)
Badly!
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Life... (Score:2)
Uh... finds a way.
BRILLIANT! (Score:2)
Unintended, not unexpected. (Score:2)
Anything less than 100% effective has the potential for events like this, and it was entirely foreseeable as a possibility. I can understand if they had no idea how likely it was, or how to defend against it without a specific threat in hand, but "this may not work perfectly, and some of what we release may in fact breed" is just something that needs to be considered. Always assume Murphy's Law will hold.
North Carolina will have to study this ... (Score:2)
... idea as they have done in the past.
Transgenic mosquitoes in bathrooms?
It's complicated. [theguardian.com]
“After so many years of managing the anxiety of HB2 and fighting so hard, I am relieved that we finally have a court order to protect transgender [mosquitoes] from being punished under these laws,” said Joaquin Carcaño, the lead plaintiff.
Emphasis mine.
Pretty sure we called it before they released 'em. (Score:1)
Admittedly, it was a decent idea to genetically engineer a species of mosquito that could help thin out the rest of the mosquito population in order to reduce the spread of diseases and such. And I have to assume that they saw this coming, but calculated the chances of this happening as being low enough that it probably wouldn't happen.
The problem was that they only stopped at "probably won't happen" instead of making sure to reduce the chances to "almost certainly won't happen." These scientists were so pr