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Gene drive used to turn all female mosquitos sterile
- dasanman 8y agoI always get nervous when science start tampering with these things. Before you know it, zombie apocalypse!
- sudhirj 8y agoMight help to remember that random DNA changes occur every single time sexual reproduction occurs, so trillions of times a day (across all animals). The gene drive is a way of selection and replication, don't think it causes something to occur that did not already have a non-zero chance of happening.
- ForHackernews 8y agoGene drive is more risky than regular normal mutations because the allele will be inherited by all offspring.
- sudhirj 8y agoBut even the mutation that causes the allele to be inherited by all offspring is possible naturally, right? Isn’t that the same as the fragments that cause all human offspring to have two eyes? Or does this drive have an anti-mutation mutation built in? The article seems to indicate that this is a particularly devious set of changes that will cause offspring to either have the changes wanted, or die.
- ForHackernews 8y agoYou can read up on gene drive, but the short version is that it's a devious genetic-engineering trick so that if even one copy of the allele is present, all offspring will get it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive#/media/File:Gene_Drive.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive#/media/File:Gene_Dr... The allele will replicate itself onto the homologous chromosome. Another way to think of it is that an allele from a gene-drive parent will wipe out and copy itself over the allele from the other parent. It'd be like if instead of the only the phenotypic expression of brown eyes being dominant over blue eyes, rather the brown gene actually wiped out the blue gene so no blue-eyed children could be born from a pairing of one brown-eyed and one blue-eyed parent.
- amelius 8y agoThings like this always make me think of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
- pure-awesome 8y agoI assume you are specifically referring to the Great Filter, yes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
- jobigoud 8y agoHere is John Sotos paper "Biotechnology and the lifetime of technical civilizations" where he looks at the ramifications of a society where any resourceful person will have access to biotechnology capable of killing millions and setting back civilization. https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01149 https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01149
- netgusto 8y agoMaybe an irrational fear, but how can we be absolutely sure (as in total certainty) that this kind of manipulation cannot "jump" to another living thing? Through mosquito bites, or by the mosquitoes being eaten by other animals, or perhaps by another, more subtle way?
- speedplane 8y agoHow can we be certain that any chemical we put into the environment will not cause some catastrophe? We can’t. We can only study the solution until we get to some reasonable level of certainty.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoManipulating genes is different, if the genetic variation can be transmitted somehow (as occurrs in GMOs, I gather) then the influence is transmitted. It's viral (no pun intended) and subject to random mutations that may be more virulent. With chemicals they tend to degrade. It's like the influence of single chain letter that's physically passed from hand to hand (and eventually falls apart) vs a Facebook post that's effectively infinitely duplicable. The diligence in handling genetic solutions to biological problems needs to be substantially greater.
- speedplane 8y agoThere are plenty of chemicals that don't degrade or degrade extremely slowly (e.g., PCBs, radioactive chemicals), and which can influence a species or ecosystem over many generations. Introducing genes definitely pose risks, but I they aren't fundamentally different from any other dangerous chemicals. We have tools and frameworks to evaluate this risk.
- strainer 8y agoIt is not the case that all types of chemical are equally mysterious to the environment. Fundamentally if the chemical or thing is already in the environment then we can quite confidently deduce the environment is evolved to work with not dissimilar amounts of it.
- billynbn 8y agoHow likely is it this could turn into a children of men situation if the delivery method becomes trivial?
- alexc05 8y agoIs this a plan to eliminate mosquitoes? Are there concerns about eliminating an entire tier of the food chain? Surely this would be bad for the things that eat mosquitoes. And the things that eat those things etc.
- doombolt 8y agoAs a person living in mosquito-prone area, I would say that those concerns are secondary to the quality of life implications even before diseases are taken into account. Those mosquitoes had it coming for a long, long time. But I have only now thought out of a different reason. Basically we had the choice of either living with malaria mosquitoes or converting all of wetland into dry land, completely destroying ecosystem that was there. But now we have option of just eliminating mosquitoes while leaving the rest of wetland intact. To me it does sound like a plan.
- ForHackernews 8y agoSupposedly ecologists who have researched this believe that there are other substitute insects (gnats, flies, etc) that will provide enough food that removing mosquitoes would not be catastrophic. I'm a little dubious myself, but I do hate mosquito bites, and I don't even live in a malaria zone.
- macintux 8y agoThere are an estimated 100 billion brine flies in the Great Salt Lake ecosystem. I’m confident there will be insects to fill the void. (I don’t mean to sound blasé, especially given the environmental pressures facing so many insects, but I won’t shed a tear for mosquitos.)
- awestroke 8y agoIt's only malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, lots of other types of mosquito will fill the void very quickly.
- lwansbrough 8y agoI hope we’re right about mosquitoes. I recall that humans culled thousands of elephants in the past because we were convinced it would solve desertification in parts of Africa. Of course we were wrong.
- awestroke 8y agoIt's only malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, lots of other types of mosquito will fill the void very quickly.
- gldalmaso 8y agoHonest question, won't the microorganisms that actually cause the disease adapt as well, perhaps jumping to another species of mosquito that is even more in contact with humans? Do they depend on a specific characteristic of certain species of mosquitoes to thrive? Is there zero chance that we won't end up spreading more Malaria? Or end up with something worse than Malaria?
- tralarpa 8y agoYes, could happen. The extermination of the host could put pressure on the parasite and favor mutations that give them the ability to live in other species of mosquitoes (which didn't happen in the past for whatever reason, for example because the mosquitoes transmitting Malaria were competitors to those other mosquitoes and displaced them). We were not even able to predict the impact of some rabbits on the local fauna. Now we want to play with genes.
- clort 8y agoI'd say though, that if the mosquitoes die off in approximately 10 generations then the parasites are likely to die with them rather than suddenly adapt where they never did before
- petre 8y agoThey need to adapt rather quickly if the mosquito population collapsed in 8 to 11 generations during the trials. They also could have adapted in places where malaria was erradicated but did not.
- nicktelford 8y agoEveryone questioning the wisdom of eliminating "all mosquitos": only a very small number of mosquito sub-species are capable of transmitting malaria to humans. The plan is to target those sub-species only. Other forms of mosquitos would fill in the gaps in the food-chain.
- daddylonglegs 8y agoA nitpick, this would aimed at eliminating complete species rather than sub-species. There are thousands of species of mosquito, a handful of those species account for almost all transmission of mosquito-borne, human diseases. Almost all ecological niches would be filled by other species. The capability for human disease transmission would be greatly reduced but not - I think - completely eliminated. There are reasonable worries about something like this but I'm in favour because malaria really does kill an awful lot of people. We have already massively changed insect populations around the world with land use changes, species introductions and pesticides (including the continuously needed mosquito control). Also, I would think that a gene drive that eliminates populations is self-limiting, to the extent that it works, whereas other genetic interventions would stay around indefinitely and be subject to mutation at any point. Edit: I think the greatest ecological change would be as a consequence of the increase in human impact that followed the increase in wellbeing in the worst affected areas. I'm not going to begrudge that.
- imron 8y ago> The plan is to target those sub-species only. How does the saying go? The best laid plans of mice and men always work out exactly as predicted and never suffer from unintended consequences. Just like cane toads and prickly pear.
- jhabdas 8y agoSmartest guy in the room right there. And all they needed was to genetically engineer some cicak for shitty weather.
- Jedd 8y ago> Just like cane toads and prickly pear. Happily we're (I'm speaking on behalf of people way smarter than myself) getting much, much better at this. An article on Vox, discussed here 4 months ago, is just one poignant example of the level of introspection and caution being exercised by everyone involved in these trials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17214676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17214676 "Kevin Esvelt wants me to know that if I fuck up this article, 25,000 children could end up dead." The whole article is a tremendously compelling read. I'm usually pretty wary of the whole 'we've come a long way since ...', but in this realm we really do appear to have done exactly that. The 1920/1930's attitudes could best be described as incautious (more accurately as brazen, cowboy, insouciant, etc). Cane toads and prickly pear (and tiger pear and heliotrope and rabbits and hudsons pear and ...) are pests whose impact are nearly impossible to describe to people outside the ecosystems impacted by them, but the people dealing with these things are so much better informed than the lab techs of a hundred years ago and know that if they fuck it up, there'll be a wiki page about them that'll last another hundred years.
- Dowwie 8y agoHas anyone seen the movie "Children of Men"? I realize mosquitoes hardly, if at all, share dna with people but my imagination immediately jumped to wondering what if modified mosquitoes managed to spread their sterility to humans? Mosquitos are nature's ideal assassin of mankind. Arming them with the seeds of our despair would be a great misfortune.
- gentaro 8y agoAgreed, if we make all females of their species sterile, who is to say that the males won't cuck us and start mating with the females of our species? Any female born from a mosquito/human coupling would likely be sterile as well.
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoThen human reproduction will only be possible through IVF or gene therapy, which might make some people happy
- callesgg 8y agoIf all the females are infertile there will be no offspring, how could a gene drive work if it cant spread the genes?
- xevb3k 8y agoIt’s worth reading the article, it’s actually not bad! The key quote is probably: “This is precisely the area that the researchers, from Imperial College in the UK, targeted with their gene drive system. Males that carry one or two copies of the edited version of the doublesex gene develop perfectly normally and are fertile. Females with only one copy also develop normally. In all these cases, these animals will experience gene editing, and all their offspring will end up receiving a copy of the edited version of the gene from them. And females where both copies have been edited develop with a mix of male and female traits and can't reproduce.” So the majority of offspring carrying the trait can reproduce. The gene drive mechanism ensures that while the change reduces fitness, it still spreads through the population. It does this, because even if the gene drive modification only exists on one chromosome, it will copy itself to the other chromosome.
- ajuc 8y agoYou make it a recessive trait. So only if both parents have it - it gets activated and the child is infertile.
- felipemnoa 8y agoI'm still wondering why we cannot do this to bugs like ticks or bed bugs? Especially bed bugs, they are really hard to kill and spread like crazy.
- phkahler 8y agoI'd guess that bedbugs exist in separate populations that don't inter-breed much. Once house or hotel may harbor a population that exists in isolation and can sometimes spread to new locations. Mosquitoes live outdoors, but still don't constitute one large population. If we were to try to eradicate them I think using multiple techniques at once on a global scale would probably be necessary. You want to get them ALL. There will always be that one place with a bedbug population in isolation waiting to reintroduce them to the world.
- lwhi 8y agoOne step closer to a Handmaid's Tale. Blessed be the fruit ..
- 3d-avid 8y agoMay the Lord open.
- bryanrasmussen 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution
- memebox3f 8y agoWhat could possibly go wrong? Seriously there needs to be public oversight on this research. It has a non zero chance of significantly damaging the biosphere.
- godelmachine 8y agoDo mosquitoes really serve any benign purpose in the biosphere with their existence?
- tfha 8y agoYou are missing the point. Gene drive can do this to any species.
- godelmachine 8y agoNow the clouds part. Mosquitoes are just the first guinea pigs to see if this Gene Drive works as desired or not, am I right?
- david-gpu 8y agoI don't think we can know with absolutely certainty, and driving a species (or many) to extinction is irreversible with our current technology, so we should think real hard before choosing to wipe a species out.
- mrweasel 8y agoThey are a source of food for the next step in the food chain. You risk disturbing the entire ecosystem by eliminating mosquitos. Maybe some other insect will take their place, but the you risk eliminating the species as well because to many are eat. It’s insanely complicated, and you can’t think in terms of benign or not. All animals are benign, they’re just animal filling out their niche in nature.
- ddingus 8y agoWe do not understand well enough to even believe we can properly assess that question, let alone express reputable confidence.
- mdimec4 8y agoDriving entire animal spicies into extinction is a wrong.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoWe're already using massive spraying of insecticides. This has got to be less damaging? People are going to do something, hard to stop them, this might be the better alternative
- denzil_correa 8y agoA recent study has shown that removal of malaria carrying mosquitoes is unlikely to affect our ecosystem [0]. > Lead author Dr Tilly Collins, from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial, said: “As adults, An. gambiae mosquitoes are small, hard to catch, most mobile at night and not very juicy, so they are not a rewarding prey for both insect and vertebrate predators. Many do eat them -- sometimes accidentally -- but there is no evidence that they are a big or vital part of the diet of any other animal. > “There is one curious jumping spider known as ‘the vampire spider’ that lives in homes around the shores of Lake Victoria and does have a fondness for female blood-fed mosquitoes. Resting blood-fed females are easy and more nutritious prey as they digest their blood meal, but this spider will readily eat other available mosquito species as opportunity arises.” [0] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/187427/removing-malariacarrying-mosquitoes-unlikely-affect-ecosystems/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/187427/removing-malariacarry...
- KZeillmann 8y agoThis is an absolute no-brainer. Mosquitoes are flying disease vectors that deserve to be eliminated. In the Americas, they're an annoyance, but in many other parts of the world, they cause millions of deaths per year. Many studies have shown that the extinction of mosquitoes would have little if any ecological impact. I think if we had to worry about malaria in the Americas, we'd have eliminated mosquitoes years ago, and this wouldn't even be a question of whether or not we should do this.
- CWuestefeld 8y agoFrom TFA: the gene drive isn't ready for use in the field. Doublesex is so central to insect sex determination that every species we have looked at has a version, and the ones in closely related species are similar enough that the gene-drive construct could potentially hop species. While targeting other mosquitos might not be a terrible thing, we probably want to have a clear idea of potential issues before releasing anything like this into the wild.
- JamesBarney 8y agoYeah, but this has to be weighed against the fact that every year we wait a half a million African children die.
- aaron_m04 8y agoOK, but can you even guarantee an upper bound on the damage of this gene drive getting out of control? For all we know, it could result in even more lives lost. We would be so screwed if, for example, all insects became extinct.
- JamesBarney 8y agoHow would this happen? Insects are very different genetically, and can't even come close to cross breeding, which is how the gene drive is spread.
- 8y ago
- durbatuluk 8y agoAs ecologist this scare me to death. Yesterday I was wondering where are the predators who didn't fill this "empty niche" on cities? Dragonflies are natural predators on environment but cannot stand urban micro climate. Thinking something will fill a empty niche is a theory. Even "niche" occupation is a theory which is show to not fit many places (amazon basin). Some consequences are starting to be measured and we're turning our eyes because we don't like bites? I got Dengue in two occasions and I really hate these mosquitos but we must not be innocent to think there is no consequences and nature will solve this for us. > They found that the birds produced on average two chicks per nest after spraying, compared with three for birds at control sites. > https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html Old compilation of papers about the consequences.
- ianbicking 8y agoMosquitoes are already under constant attack, and no wishing can change that. To attack mosquitoes we use chemicals that have widespread effects on other animals, and humans regularly destroy entire ecosystems to remove mosquito environments. The ecological damage of our war on mosquitoes is huge and as old as civil engineering. We can't stop the war, but we could win the war.
- mrfusion 8y agoHere’s a good reply I saw in reddit in response to your type: > Malaria is only carried by a tiny number of mosquito species. Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans. We can target exactly the ones we want and even better : nothing stops us from maintaining a population in some labs somewhere. If it turns out they matter in any significant way, contrary to various impact analysis... we just release them back into the environment. The current cost of not wiping out those few mosquito species is about half a million dead children. Imagine that someone was nuking a mid sized American city every year and you could stop it right now but you'd prefer to wait for a slightly more athsteticly pleasing solution. How much blood would you be willing to let stain your soul .
- drngdds 8y ago>Some consequences are starting to be measured and we're turning our eyes because we don't like bites? Mosquitoes are the main transmission vector for malaria, which kills more than half a million people every year. This is literally one of the biggest problems in the world.
- nardi 8y agoGene drive is terrifying. Has anyone done any research on a gene drive “antidote” so we can fix it if we screw something up? A gene that would remove the gene drive?
- shadofx 8y agoYou could isolate some mosquitoes in captivity and wait for the afflicted ones to die off completely.