Scientists Release Genetically Modified Mosquitoes in High-Security Lab

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/20/693735499/scientists-release-controversial-genetically-modified-mosquitoes-in-high-securit

by gerbilly • 7 years ago

71 63 7 years ago

npr.org

grawprog2• 7 years ago

As much as I dislike mosquitoes and know they're a health hazard, this is a horrible idea. A whole bunch of insectivores rely on mosquitoes as a primary food source. A single bat can eat it's own body weight in mosquitoes in one night. They really do play an important part in most ecosystems. There are some fairly serious negative consequences to this that really seem to be being downplayed or ignored in the name of public safety.

bryanlarsen• 7 years ago

They're only targeting a single species of mosquito. Other species will quickly move in to fill the same niche so the impact should be minimal. Sure it's risky, but the reward is significant.

blurbleblurble6• 7 years ago

Can you show me some evidence that the gene drive affecting that species won't affect other species?

From what I've read, hybridization does occur between mosquito species.

blurbleblurble6• 7 years ago

This is certainly a bad idea.

But there are people out here who think they're so smart: to hell with the big picture, to hell with ecology, to hell even with consensus and consent. They are certain that they know what's best for the planet, for sexually reproducing life forms in general, and for humans. So they are forging ahead whether you or I like it or not.

I feel hopeless about it.

cf4982• 7 years ago

What possible negative consequences are there, that are worse then the current status quo? Even with conservative estimates we are at around half a million death by malaria every year.

grawprog2• 7 years ago

https://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth-went...

If mosquitoes went extinct: Mosquito larvae are very important in aquatic ecology. Many other insects and small fish feed on them and the loss of that food source would cause their numbers to decline as well. Anything that feeds on them, such as game fish, raptorial birds, etc. would in turn suffer too.

Mosquitoes and their lavae are a primary food source for muliple bird, mammal and fish species.

drak0n1c• 7 years ago

There have been no cases of GMO vegetable or animal tissue resulting in abnormal digestion when consumed. The nutrients are the same, and genetically modified organisms don't have any additional toxins (unless they have been specifically engineered to secrete completely new substances).

dbg31415• 7 years ago

"While genetically female, the transformed insects have mouths that resemble male mosquito mouths. That means they can't bite and so can't spread the malaria parasite. In addition, the insects' reproductive organs are deformed, which means they can't lay eggs."

This is awesome. It's one of those things that makes you feel like you live in the future. Preventing the spread of Malaria, Zika, West Nile, a bunch of other things... and saving our dogs from heart worms! Not to mention avoiding all the cancer and neurological illnesses we've had to endure thanks to chemicals in repellants we had to use...

I'm sure there are consequences for killing off all the mosquitoes, and we'll have to deal with those... but I for one can't wait to deal with those problems instead of mosquitoes.

saagarjha2• 7 years ago

I'm sure there are consequences for killing off all the mosquitoes, and we'll have to deal with those... but I for one can't wait to deal with those problems instead of mosquitoes.

I’m not sure we know the scale of these problems. Historically, messing with the ecological food web like this has often caused more harm than good, so I think it’s worth it to be more careful than this.

foobar1962• 7 years ago

Consider the Cane Toad problem in Australia as a case in point. Introduced in 1935 to control a beetle that attacked sugar cane, it became a huge ecological disaster. It also failed to solve the original objective.

It appears the toads have evolved longer legs so they can travel faster and further.

The big problem with the toad is that they are poisonous. Native larger animals eat them and die, which reduces biodiversity and leaves the toads free to grow and expand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia

thret• 7 years ago

Aren't species already going extinct every day?

empath75• 7 years ago

Human overpopulation, famine and war, most likely.

stubish2• 7 years ago

I'm sure there are consequences for killing off all the mosquitoes, and we'll have to deal with those... but I for one can't wait to deal with those problems instead of mosquitoes.

Nobody is proposing killing all the mosquitoes, and I doubt it would be possible to do so with the techniques being investigated. Only the specific species of mosquito that carry specific parasites are being targeted. You will not see a reduction in mosquito numbers, as the population of other mosquito species will grow to fill the void.

Or nothing will happen at all. I think I've been reading about tests and trial releases of generically modified mosquitoes for decades, but nothing as far as even discussing the mass releases needed to eradicate the malaria parasite and the disease. And almost nothing unfortunately on the other mosquito born illnesses you cite.

chr12• 7 years ago

and I doubt it would be possible to do so with the techniques being investigated

the doublesex gene targeted by this gene drive is similar in all insects, so if this works we'll have a powerful tool not only against mosquitos, but also against all agricultural pests, which is very exciting.

iandanforth• 7 years ago

Ok here's the prompt: A eugenics tool this powerful will eventually be misused in humans.

Thoughts?

yingw787• 7 years ago

I think that's the premise of a video game already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division

mrmyers• 7 years ago

As long as we're discussing video games...

It has been my private head canon for a number of years that the Gerudo race in the Legend of Zelda are the result of an attempted gene drive to exterminate Hylians. The fact that their offspring are (almost) exclusively female suggests it, and attaching the modification to a (literal) fitness increase would be a reasonable way to try to help it achieve fixation sooner.

Well, looks like I'm going to have the Gerudo Desert theme stuck in my head for the rest of the night.

buboard• 7 years ago

humans don't reproduce every few days

greeneggs• 7 years ago

If a mad scientist mastered the technology and introduced a gene drive to make humans dislike broccoli, say, how long would it take for us to detect the attack?

Could we undo it? Since CRISPR modifications have side effects, would we feel safe trying to undo it? Where would we draw the line?

If the mad scientist targeted broccoli bitterness, maybe we would let it pass, especially if we detected the attack after hundreds or thousands of people had been affected. The cure could be more dangerous than the disease.

If the mad scientist decided to try to give everyone blue eyes, maybe we'd act more aggressively to undo it?

I don't think the answers are obvious. And since these are not billion-dollar experiments, it could be a real concern.

felipemnoa• 7 years ago

Pretty much the plot of I Am Legend where a cure to eradicate all cancers had huge unforeseen circumstances.

Nasrudith2• 7 years ago

That really doesn't seem like it would work at all.

Humans are pretty pair bonding. It would need selective pressure and would take generations. There would need to be way too many suddenly appearing partners or modifications. Even if it somehow worked to say result in sterility it could be undone. Given that the trap would take generations and the state of the art advances it could well be completely effortlessly defeated because everyone is having genetic diseases and cancer risk factors removed from their children anyway.

dpacmittal• 7 years ago

Someone's already trying genetically modified human twins in China.

pmoriarty2• 7 years ago

I've often wondered why malaria eradication campaigns always seem to target mosquitoes rather than the mosquito-borne parasites that actually cause the disease.

Wouldn't it make sense to go after the root cause rather than merely its host?

daniel-cussen• 7 years ago

The mosquito is made of more parts and they're more differentiated than a virus, so there's more ways to make it fail.

EDIT/Errata: Malaria is not a virus.

tgb2• 7 years ago

Malaria isn't a virus, FYI. Nor a bacteria.

biomcgary• 7 years ago

Malaria is caused by a protist (a singled celled organism), not a virus. To some extent, you are right about the mosquito being a bigger target. However, the larger reason is that Plasmodium populations (the protist) are larger than mosquito populations and, consequently, can evolve around human modifications faster.

gpm2• 7 years ago

- Less types of mosquito's

- Way (many orders of magnitude) less # of mosquitos than parasite organisms (malaria is a single celled organism, mosquito's are ~1 million celled organisms).

- Mosquito's reproduce sexually, malaria reproduces asexually, someone had a good idea about how to target sexual reproduction.

throway889898982• 7 years ago

often wondered

Lack of a vaccine.

Drug resistance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria

gpm2• 7 years ago

Do vaccines even exist for organisms in the same class as malaria? I've always associated them with viruses.

chr12• 7 years ago

In addition to the objective reasons why it is not possible mentioned by sibling comments, there is a subjective reason that many people don't like mosquitos, and think they deserve eradication independently from malaria.

smallgovt• 7 years ago

While genetically female, the transformed insects have mouths that resemble male mosquito mouths. That means they can't bite and so can't spread the malaria parasite. In addition, the insects' reproductive organs are deformed, which means they can't lay eggs.

I'm confused. If these mutated insects are unable to reproduce, how do they spread their mutation to the rest of the population?

pmoriarty2• 7 years ago

Maybe the idea is that the wild male mosquitoes will mate with these sterile, genetically-modified females instead of with some of the wild female mosquitoes, and so the total wild mosquito population will be reduced.

tgb2• 7 years ago

The article doesn't really explain, but there's more to it than that. My guess is that the male offspring are still fertile, but carry the gene drive and so spread the infertile-female gene to all their offspring. Eventually, the entire population is rendered either male or infertile females and dies.

fourthark• 7 years ago

Next sentence:

As more and more female mosquitoes inherit two copies of the modification, more and more become sterile.

So maybe the mutations activate only when inherited from _both_ parents?

szafranek• 7 years ago

You may find the details of how this works in the original paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4245

danschumann• 7 years ago

I can't help but imagine the opening scene of every zombie movie ever. Let's make sure this tech is highly guarded.

blurbleblurble6• 7 years ago

Crispr is not highly guarded, nor have we learned our lesson about how dangerous it is.

Valmar• 7 years ago

The thing that worries me the most about these technologies is when we make changes with them, those changes seem fine in the lab, and then when those changes spread in an ecosystem for long enough, suddenly, problems start popping up due to those changes.

By then, it's far too late to undo those changes. The genetic pollution remains forever.

It is therefore far better to have never done any genetic modification at all, because we simply don't understand how one change interacts with everything else.

Nature has done so much better than we have ~ therefore, because we don't understand nature's decision-making process, and never have, and most probably never will, we should never interfere with tinkering with something extremely and profoundly complicated like DNA.

Selective breeding is superior to humans tinkering with the genome directly.

pvaldes• 7 years ago

As more and more female mosquitoes inherit two copies of the modification, more and more become sterile.

So our plan is trusting in the reproduction of an sterile animal that is unable to reproduce but must multiply somehow (by budding?) to replace the wild population that 1) do not have any problem to lay eggs or mate, 2) are much more numerous and 3) can suck blood that is needed to bost the egg production.

It seems that this plan has some loopholes...

techrich• 7 years ago

We should not be messing with this, we are not smart enough to see what will happen in the future.

speedplane2• 7 years ago

We release barely studied chemicals and materials into the environment all the time. This is concerning, but it's not fundamentally different from what we've been doing for decades.

blurbleblurble6• 7 years ago

Decades are an unbelievably short timescale and we're already seeing mass extinction and population losses across the board for many different species from all walks of life.

How much of it is related to stuff we've done at large scale before understanding the consequences?

somishere• 7 years ago

Is this supposed to be groundbreaking? Seems very similar to methods that have already been successfully trialed in the wild in both the US and Australia: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-10/zika-and-dengue-sp...

avip• 7 years ago

These are not GM-ed, they are sterilized using bacteria infection.

bitL• 7 years ago

Article in 5 years: "A record drop in bird, bat, dragonfly, frog, damselfly, spider and turtle populations measured across all areas with former abundance of mosquitoes. More victims of climate change/pollution/glyphosate! Somebody do something, quickly, please!"

These kinds of experiments of course never have any side-effects...

DyslexicAtheist• 7 years ago

are mosquitoes a "key species"?

this is a must watch for anyone wondering if there might be "side-effects" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDISuJdfZk

zeckalpha• 7 years ago

There are many species of mosquito, of which, only some (<1%) transmit malaria.

In theory, the other mosquito species will adapt to fill the niches that the controlled species once occupied.

vinniejames• 7 years ago

Why not focus on narrowing down the gene edit so only the biting ability is destroyed, allowing the females to reproduce?

Seems like a safer option in the long run

dasv• 7 years ago

Female mosquitoes need blood to obtain protein for the eggs. If they can't bite, they won't be able to reproduce either.

Scientists Release Genetically Modified Mosquitoes in High-Security Lab

Related Stories