8 ms·

Scientists Release Genetically Modified Mosquitoes in High-Security Lab

71 points by gerbilly 8y ago

grawprog 8y 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 8y 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.
  - macawfish 8y 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.
    - stubish 8y ago
      The math does not work out. Hybridization happens rarely. To affect another species, hybridization would need to happen on a large enough scale that the hybrid population increases, despite the fact that the hybrid species becomes sterile after a few generations. The hybrid species would also need to out compete the other species, again, before the hybrid species dies out because of the genetic modifications.
      - macawfish 8y ago
        I don't know what math you're referring to, but the possibility of adaptive introgression strikes me to be non-negligible, especially given that it has specifically been observed in mosuitoes under selective pressure from pesticides... Hybridization rates are not static. What's more, hybrid mosquitoes would in no way be limited to mating with other hybrid mosquitoes. Consider that this gene drive diminishes the female mosquito's ability to feed on blood. I'd expect it be possible that this would cause modified female mosquitoes to be maladapted in other ways. If modified female mosquitoes were to experience significant additional stress, the adult sex ratio in modified mosquitoes could shift dramatically toward an overbalance of modified males. If this were to happen, don't you see how it could increase pressure on males to outbreed? E.g. if a large proportion of their natural mates were either dead or malnourished? Similarly, can you see how the same kind of situation might emerge for the hybrids, increasing the likelihood of backcrossing? A gene drive that specifically disrupts the females' ability to survive seems like it would increase the likelihood of introgression, potentially by a lot. This whole situation just strikes me as highly unpredictable, risky and poorly understood.
        johnr2 8y ago
        > I don't know what math you're referring to... Thank you for the rational comment. I found some of your other posts in this discussion to be emotional enough to make me not take them seriously (although I agree with the need for being cautious with GM). A post like the one above carries a lot more weight than "makes me sick" type comments. It's an emotive subject for sure, but straying too much from a rational tone can be counterproductive.
- macawfish 8y 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.
- cf498 8y 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.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    https://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth-went-extinct-tomorrow-1646840383 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.
    - cf498 8y ago
      I am aware of that, but that as a worst case would be completely acceptable in my eyes as it prevents the death of so many people. A chain reaction of multiple other species going extinct, how ever realistic this is, would still be alot better then the current status quo. The only thing I could see was a permanent damage to the ability of these regions to produce food. For which I have seen no realistic hypothesis yet.
- drak0n1c 8y 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).
lameiam 8y ago
what could possibly go wrong.
- seattle_spring 8y ago
  Millions of deaths from mosquito borne illness? Oh wait that's what we have now.
  - insectovore 8y ago
    Millions of deaths is your rate, is that what you’re saying? Yes, yes? Can you take that rate, and... double it?
  - macawfish 8y ago
    Or: insult to injury in the ongoing mass extinction. This is fighting fire with fire.
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      The reason that cliché exists is because it is, indeed, sometimes appropriate to fight fire with fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair The precautionary principle is great until it gets a bunch of people killed, which is what happens when we let species like mosquitoes live.
      - macawfish 8y ago
        For the record it also makes me sick when people apply that same logic in the reverse direction, to humans.
        gpm 8y ago
        That sometimes you have to kill people to stop people from killing people? Does that mean you disapprove of the allies fighting WW2 germany by killing their soldiers? We should have attempted to use only non lethal weapons? Or should have just let them commit genocide? (I know, godwin's law, but it's a relevant uncontroversial example here).
dbg31415 8y 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.
- saagarjha 8y 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 8y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia
  - 420codebro 8y ago
    Yeah let’s sit around and jerk off while we have shit we could use to make a difference. Real stumper. Not.
  - thret 8y ago
iandanforth 8y ago
Ok here's the prompt: A eugenics tool this powerful will eventually be misused in humans. Thoughts?
- yingw787 8y ago
  I think that's the premise of a video game already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division
  - mrmyers 8y 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 8y ago
  humans don't reproduce every few days
  - greeneggs 8y 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.
pmoriarty 8y 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 8y 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.
  - tgb 8y ago
    Malaria isn't a virus, FYI. Nor a bacteria.
  - biomcgary 8y 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.
- gpm 8y 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.
- throway88989898 8y ago
  > often wondered Lack of a vaccine. Drug resistance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria
  - gpm 8y ago
    Do vaccines even exist for organisms in the same class as malaria? I've always associated them with viruses.
smallgovt 8y 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?
- pmoriarty 8y 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.
  - tgb 8y 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.
    - macawfish 8y ago
      *it's also possible that at the end the males will start hybridizing with females from other species.
- fourthark 8y 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 8y ago
  You may find the details of how this works in the original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4245 https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4245
danschumann 8y ago
I can't help but imagine the opening scene of every zombie movie ever. Let's make sure this tech is highly guarded.
- macawfish 8y ago
  Crispr is not highly guarded, nor have we learned our lesson about how dangerous it is.
  - Valmar 8y 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.
    - speedplane 8y 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. I agree with your concern, but I don't see this technology as fundamentally different from humans have been doing for hundreds of years. We've already released so many chemicals and materials into the environment that have had many harmful and irreversible effects on the environment. Releasing a genetically modified mosquito does raise concerns, but it's not too different from putting some new chemical into the environment, which we do all the time.
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
pvaldes 8y 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 8y ago
We should not be messing with this, we are not smart enough to see what will happen in the future.
- speedplane 8y 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.
  - macawfish 8y 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 8y 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-spreading-mosquito-largely-wiped-out-in-trial/9962294 https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-10/zika-and-dengue-sp...
- avip 8y ago
  These are not GM-ed, they are sterilized using bacteria infection.
DyslexicAtheist 8y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDISuJdfZk
- zeckalpha 8y 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.
bitL 8y 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...
vinniejames 8y 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." 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 8y ago
  Female mosquitoes need blood to obtain protein for the eggs. If they can't bite, they won't be able to reproduce either.

71 points by gerbilly 8y 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 8y 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.
- macawfish 8y 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.
  - stubish 8y ago
    The math does not work out. Hybridization happens rarely. To affect another species, hybridization would need to happen on a large enough scale that the hybrid population increases, despite the fact that the hybrid species becomes sterile after a few generations. The hybrid species would also need to out compete the other species, again, before the hybrid species dies out because of the genetic modifications.
    - macawfish 8y ago
      I don't know what math you're referring to, but the possibility of adaptive introgression strikes me to be non-negligible, especially given that it has specifically been observed in mosuitoes under selective pressure from pesticides... Hybridization rates are not static. What's more, hybrid mosquitoes would in no way be limited to mating with other hybrid mosquitoes. Consider that this gene drive diminishes the female mosquito's ability to feed on blood. I'd expect it be possible that this would cause modified female mosquitoes to be maladapted in other ways. If modified female mosquitoes were to experience significant additional stress, the adult sex ratio in modified mosquitoes could shift dramatically toward an overbalance of modified males. If this were to happen, don't you see how it could increase pressure on males to outbreed? E.g. if a large proportion of their natural mates were either dead or malnourished? Similarly, can you see how the same kind of situation might emerge for the hybrids, increasing the likelihood of backcrossing? A gene drive that specifically disrupts the females' ability to survive seems like it would increase the likelihood of introgression, potentially by a lot. This whole situation just strikes me as highly unpredictable, risky and poorly understood.
      - johnr2 8y ago
        > I don't know what math you're referring to... Thank you for the rational comment. I found some of your other posts in this discussion to be emotional enough to make me not take them seriously (although I agree with the need for being cautious with GM). A post like the one above carries a lot more weight than "makes me sick" type comments. It's an emotive subject for sure, but straying too much from a rational tone can be counterproductive.
macawfish 8y 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.
cf498 8y 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.
- grawprog 8y ago
  https://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth-went-extinct-tomorrow-1646840383 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.
  - cf498 8y ago
    I am aware of that, but that as a worst case would be completely acceptable in my eyes as it prevents the death of so many people. A chain reaction of multiple other species going extinct, how ever realistic this is, would still be alot better then the current status quo. The only thing I could see was a permanent damage to the ability of these regions to produce food. For which I have seen no realistic hypothesis yet.
drak0n1c 8y 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).

lameiam 8y ago

what could possibly go wrong.

seattle_spring 8y ago
Millions of deaths from mosquito borne illness? Oh wait that's what we have now.
- insectovore 8y ago
  Millions of deaths is your rate, is that what you’re saying? Yes, yes? Can you take that rate, and... double it?
- macawfish 8y ago
  Or: insult to injury in the ongoing mass extinction. This is fighting fire with fire.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    The reason that cliché exists is because it is, indeed, sometimes appropriate to fight fire with fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair The precautionary principle is great until it gets a bunch of people killed, which is what happens when we let species like mosquitoes live.
    - macawfish 8y ago
      For the record it also makes me sick when people apply that same logic in the reverse direction, to humans.
      - gpm 8y ago
        That sometimes you have to kill people to stop people from killing people? Does that mean you disapprove of the allies fighting WW2 germany by killing their soldiers? We should have attempted to use only non lethal weapons? Or should have just let them commit genocide? (I know, godwin's law, but it's a relevant uncontroversial example here).

dbg31415 8y 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.

saagarjha 8y 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 8y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia
- 420codebro 8y ago
  Yeah let’s sit around and jerk off while we have shit we could use to make a difference. Real stumper. Not.
- thret 8y ago

iandanforth 8y ago

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

yingw787 8y ago
I think that's the premise of a video game already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division
- mrmyers 8y 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 8y ago
humans don't reproduce every few days
- greeneggs 8y 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.

pmoriarty 8y 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 8y 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.
- tgb 8y ago
  Malaria isn't a virus, FYI. Nor a bacteria.
- biomcgary 8y 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.
gpm 8y 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.
throway88989898 8y ago
> often wondered Lack of a vaccine. Drug resistance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria
- gpm 8y ago
  Do vaccines even exist for organisms in the same class as malaria? I've always associated them with viruses.

smallgovt 8y 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?

pmoriarty 8y 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.
- tgb 8y 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.
  - macawfish 8y ago
    *it's also possible that at the end the males will start hybridizing with females from other species.
fourthark 8y 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 8y ago
You may find the details of how this works in the original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4245 https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4245

danschumann 8y ago

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

macawfish 8y ago
Crispr is not highly guarded, nor have we learned our lesson about how dangerous it is.
- Valmar 8y 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.
  - speedplane 8y 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. I agree with your concern, but I don't see this technology as fundamentally different from humans have been doing for hundreds of years. We've already released so many chemicals and materials into the environment that have had many harmful and irreversible effects on the environment. Releasing a genetically modified mosquito does raise concerns, but it's not too different from putting some new chemical into the environment, which we do all the time.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago

pvaldes 8y 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 8y ago

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

speedplane 8y 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.
- macawfish 8y 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 8y 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-spreading-mosquito-largely-wiped-out-in-trial/9962294 https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-10/zika-and-dengue-sp...

avip 8y ago
These are not GM-ed, they are sterilized using bacteria infection.

DyslexicAtheist 8y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDISuJdfZk

zeckalpha 8y 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.

bitL 8y 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...

vinniejames 8y ago

dasv 8y ago
Female mosquitoes need blood to obtain protein for the eggs. If they can't bite, they won't be able to reproduce either.