Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Cross With Natural Species

[Dave-W]

Biotech company Oxitec has created genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes in an attempt to control mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya and Zika.

The male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes have been genetically engineered to carry a "genetic kill switch," such that when they mate with wild female mosquitoes, their offspring inherit the lethal gene and cannot survive or reproduce in the wild.

Except, the GE mosquitoes have already been released in Brazil, and researchers monitoring the project have found the GE genes have crossed with wild mosquitoes — despite the company’s assurances that this wouldn’t happen.

Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Cross With Natural Species

 

[devin553344]

Biotech company Oxitec has created genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes in an attempt to control mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya and Zika.

The male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes have been genetically engineered to carry a "genetic kill switch," such that when they mate with wild female mosquitoes, their offspring inherit the lethal gene and cannot survive or reproduce in the wild.

Except, the GE mosquitoes have already been released in Brazil, and researchers monitoring the project have found the GE genes have crossed with wild mosquitoes — despite the company’s assurances that this wouldn’t happen.

Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Cross With Natural Species

Disaster coming? What does that mean for us now

 

[Dave-W]

Disaster coming? What does that mean for us now

It means that the hybrid GE mosquitoes are more hearty and can carry a greater variety of bad viruses.

 

[devin553344]

It means that the hybrid GE mosquitoes are more hearty and can carry a greater variety of bad viruses.

Yikes, what a disaster, and hopefully nobody owns stock in Oxitec

 

[Dave-W]

Failed GM mosquito control experiment may have strengthened wild bugs

Update (Sept 20, 2019): We've published an article addressing issues with the study covered in the following article that were raised by Oxitec and some industry experts. That article can be found here.

Mosquitoes are more than just a pest – they can be downright dangerous carriers of disease. One of the most innovative ideas to control populations of the bugs has been to release genetically modified male mosquitoes that produce unviable offspring. But unfortunately a test of this in Brazil appears to have failed, with genes from the mutant mosquitoes now mixing with the native population.

The idea sounded solid. Male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were genetically engineered to have a dominant lethal gene. When they mated with wild female mozzies, this gene would drastically cut down the number of offspring they produced, and the few that were born should be too weak to survive long.

Ultimately, this program should cut down the population of mosquitoes in an area – up to 85 percent, in some early tests. This of course means fewer bug-borne diseases, such as dengue, yellow fever, zika, and malaria, in humans. And since the offspring don’t live long enough to breed themselves, genes from the engineered bugs should stay neatly out of the gene pool of the wild population. The only visible effect should be the reduction of mosquito populations.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. Researchers from Yale University have now examined mosquitoes around the city of Jacobina, Brazil, where the largest test of this technique has taken place over the last few years. Not only did numbers bounce back up in the months after the test, but some of the native bugs, they found, had retained genes from the engineered mosquitoes.

“The claim was that genes from the release strain would not get into the general population because offspring would die,’’ says Jeffrey Powell, senior author of a study describing the discovery. “That obviously was not what happened.”

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

Evolution. Now choose your favourite Jurassic Park quote.

 

[bèlla]

Well, we’ve designed another plague.

 

[JCFantasy23]

Not surprising at all, in any way, I expected it. When people were joking years ago - well, some only half-joking - when this idea of making man-made mosquitoes to curb the population of the bugs, people proposed disaster instead. We have met disaster with a lot of experiments like this. I like what one commenter said, "The sad fact is that we are simply NOT smart enough at genetic engineering to fool around this way yet."