mosquitos are our dire enemy, but how do we fight such a highly successful organism? in the wake of zika and renewed outbreaksof dengue fever, scientists are turning to new management methods -- including using factories to mass-breed genetically modified mosquitoes. you're familiar with the problem: mosquitoessuck our blood, and in doing so they serve as a perfect blood-bridge from individualto individual, spreading deadly pathogens such as yellow fever, zika, dengue, malaria,west nile and more. and all they need to reproduce is the tiniestbit of water for their larvae. manage standing water all you want, dust theirenvironment -- and yours -- with pesticides,
but these most-perfect organisms boast anincredible ability to bounce back from such efforts. and that's one reason for the mosquito factories. they're scientific projects aimed at pumpingout altered mosquitoes to compete with the populations that pose a threat. one such project in guangzhou, china, hasreported promising results. they're rearing and releasing mosquitos infectedwith wolbachia bacteria -- and for two very good reasons. first, the it renders the mosquitoes incapableof carrying a wide range of dangerous pathogens
-- a quirk the mosquitoes pass on to theiroffspring. again, the strategy is the same: breed thesecompromised mosquitoes and allow them to overwhelm their disease-spreading brethren. and that's where the second reason comes intoplay: wolbachia helps to curb overall population as well. when a male wolbachia-infected mosquito mateswith an uninfected female, the resulting eggs don't hatch. only when both mates carry wolbachia doesthe union result in viable eggs, which pass on the infection -- which, by the way, doesnot transfer to people.
according to the atlantic, the guangzhou projectclaims a 99 percent suppression rate in localized tests, and a similar project is underway inaustralia. the british biotechnology company oxitec hasan even more futuristic tactic: flood the mosquito population with genetically-modifiedmosquitoes that die four days later and produce offspring that die as larvae. they've been pumping these doomed gmosquitoesout in brazil to the tune of two million bugs a week -- and, as reported in technology review,they've seen impressive drops in dengue fever cases as a result. some scientists hold out hope that such geneediting could even be used to
drive mosquitoes into extinction. now, as great as that sounds, not everyone's crazy about mosquito extinction -- even if we're only talking about the couple hundred or so species -- out of3,500 -- that actually pester humans. they might be pests, but they also make upa great deal of biomass, and as such serve as food for various predators. wipe them out and you potentially unbalancethe ecosystem. and not everyone's crazy about the gmo thingeither, especially in species so intimately connected to our own blood supply. more reasonable critics question a commercialcompany's use of proprietary gene codes to
combat illness, while conspiracy theoristsin brazil have even gone so far as to, erroneously, blame zika on genetically-modified mosquitoes. hey, until vaccination catches up with thethreat, all options remain on the table -- and the resulting advancements redefine just howhumans manipulate every detail of their environment. so which mosquito-curbing method do you prefer? let us know. and if you want more weird science wonder,be sure to check out now.howstuffworks.com each and every day.
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