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GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests
- afarrell 7y agoI wonder how much ecological damage is done by humans trying to protect their communities from disease borne mosquitos. I grew up with parents that urged me to prevent pools of standing water, but don’t lots of non-mosquito insects need standing water to breed?
- joecool1029 7y ago>I grew up with parents that urged me to prevent pools of standing water, but don’t lots of non-mosquito insects need standing water to breed? Sure, they can use the other pools of standing water not near humans. The reason it works to limit some species of mosquito (mostly aedes aegypti) is that they preferentially seek to bite humans and so live near them. Other bugs seek out plants and other bugs so they can live elsewhere.
- hbilar2 7y agoquite - presumably there are other animals eating these insects. Then again, malaria kills lots and lots of people every year, and I suspect if I was in a malaria-prone country I might feel different about the balance of protecting humans vs potential ecological effects (even if in the long term this might cause big negative changes)
- mattigames 7y agoKeep in mind malaria also kills lots of animals besides humans.
- hajola 7y agoThose animals now not dying, might cause further ecological damage. Ecosystems tend to have a rather delicate balance and viruses play their part.
- mattigames 7y agoThousands of insects and animals species appeared and disappeared before humans existed, countless of times, so I wouldn't give that much weight to existent equilibriums; what we can do is being aware of the changes, e.g. if we detect a sudden increase in spiders population we can check what is killing the frogs and act accordingly
- bubblewrap 7y agoFighting Malaria will presumably enable humans to settle in more areas than before, which will in itself do a lot of ecological damage. Edit: 2 downvotes. At this point, HN might as well switch off voting. It has become ridiculous. Here is something else for you to vote down: 2 + 2 = 4 Take that, suckers!
- Nasrudith 7y agoMere habitable area is already not the main constraint by far. Farmland isn't even as increased yield has lead to a decrease and market breaking surpluses for almost a century with lesser yield boosts. If habitable land was the constraint we would see ruralization - instead we see urbanization even when policies favor the suburban.
- bubblewrap 7y agoWell then you could solve Malaria by moving away from infested places, I suppose. Not yet convinced that land use is actually shrinking, but will google. And what about the rain forests? Why burn them down, if there is enough land already?
- bubblewrap 7y agoLand use seems to have doubled in the last few decades, at least in West Africa https://eros.usgs.gov/westafrica/land-cover/land-use-and-land-cover-trends-west-africa https://eros.usgs.gov/westafrica/land-cover/land-use-and-lan... Didn't find a perfect source. But it doesn't seem to support the thesis that less land is required by humans. Are you saying farmers would work their fields covered in Mosquito nets, while most people live in Malaria free cities?
- bayesian_horse 7y agoThose "pools" are already man-made ecological systems. Not much to upset there. And you really don't want to live in a swamp, so any swamps that occupy desirable real estate are pretty much f*ed anyway. I know that certain species of Killifish in Africa can survive and reproduce in pools left behind by foot-prints. So, yes, quite interesting micro-ecosystems can exist.
- petre 7y agoYou can populate pools of standing water with fish that eat mosquito larvae like Gambusia affinis, Phoxinus phoxinus etc. https://pondinformer.com/pond-fish-that-eat-mosquito-larvae/ https://pondinformer.com/pond-fish-that-eat-mosquito-larvae/
- afarrell 7y agoIn practice, I don’t have the time. Someone with easy access to the supply chain for that fish-stocking might though. How many mosquito control agencies is that?
- afarrell 7y agoI realize I could have made my point more explicit: I suspect that we should do this so that we can remove the incentives for humans to spread pesticides and do other habitat-damaging things.
- ptah 7y agoWhat unintended consequences could large scale deployment have?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoFungi are known to produce biocides.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoThe fungus is supposed to be deployed on a rather small scale. It is not infectious for other insects, so it's probably not able to spread very far. Most of all, it is already freely spreading in its natural form, and does not lead to mass extinction of these malaria mosquitos, proven by the fact that they still exist... On top of that the spider venom is probably bad for the fungus. Apart from taking away resources from synthesizing actually useful proteins, it kills the hosts much more quickly. The fungus probably prefers to kill the host slowly in order to cover more distance.
- fiblye 7y ago>It is not infectious for other insects Yet. It’s definitely possible for it to adapt to infect something that’ll help it proliferate farther.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoWhich would be a much bigger evolutionary leap compared to losing the spider venom. And dauntingly big for a fungus that kills off 99% of hosts in the region that quickly. I presume that the fungus is obligatorily parasitic, meaning it can't thrive outside its host, except as a spore. This is true for most pathogenic fungi. From the article it's not even clear that the fungus "spreads" well or at all in a mosquito population. I think they intend to grow the spores large-scale in a lab, and infect most of the mosquitos directly, and not through secondary transmission... Also: The fungus already exists in the wild. It just doesn't kill the host that quickly.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago>The researchers say their aim is not to make the insects extinct but to help stop the spread of malaria. Nothing ever matters less than your, "aim". Intentions are massively overrated. What matters are the actual effects as measured in objective reality. One of the many reasons society is the toilet that it is is because so many judge initiatives and propsals on what they are "intended" to do or what the "aim" of a proposed action is. The Inquisitor who burns you alive because he intends to purify your soul is just as bad as psycho who burns you at the stake because he wants to watch you burn.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoThe fungus they use is already widespread in nature. Their "version" is probably less well adapted to nature than the "original", and should be out-competed by the wildtype at worst. But if I understand the article correctly, the fungus is quite deadly to mosquitos, achieving "local" extinction quickly, which also stops further spreading of the fungus.
- algorias 7y agoSure, but the first step of achieving an actual effect is to aim to achieve it, then think about how to achieve that aim. I know that it's frustrating when even scientists sometimes act with naive recklessness. A prime example is when people in the social sciences or economics don't think about individuals' incentives enough. But in this case I doubt that the people in question are unaware of the risk of overshooting their target.
- throwaway13337 7y agoPredictable negativity from the comments here ignores that over one million people die of malaria per year. Not using what we can against something this horrible is a choice, too. And one that has the greater of consequences. It's easy to poke holes in things from the sidelines. That action is actively causing us to drag our feet and kill a lot of people. It should also be noted that mosquitoes are not depended on as a basis for any known food chain.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoThe article says 400,000 people per year die from Malaria. Regardless, it’s a lot.
- throwaway13337 7y agoMy mistake. It looks like my information is old. https://ourworldindata.org/malaria https://ourworldindata.org/malaria It's gone down a lot recently due, I'm sure, to a lot of effort on this front.
- lkbm 7y agoI pay some attention to malaria rates, partly because I like to donate to the Against Malaria Fund[0], and these charts are fascinating to me because I usually just see the UN charts (the first chart in your link[1]). All the other charts on that page show deaths increasing until 2003, and then dropping. They're using IHME data. Further down, at [2], they discuss why these charts are so different, pointing out that IHME was estimating roughly double the rates as the UN in Nigeria, DRC, and India due to "differences in methodology, data coverage and sourcing". Cool, that's nice. But what happened in 2003 to turn this all around? According to the IHME itself, "One of the biggest forces in the decline in malaria deaths was the advent of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), which provided 40% of development assistance for health targeted toward malaria from 2003 to 2008."[3] So that's neat. It's important for us to keep in mind that while aid often messed up terribly (especially in the late 20th Century), a lot of aid has been working really well for decades now. We figured out, for the most part, how to provide aid without it all going to funding corrupt governments, or destroying local agricultural economies. Here's where I do a quick shill for The Against Malaria Foundation. They're very well-rated by Givewell[4], so if you want to stop malaria, I highly recommend giving them money. :-) [0] https://www.againstmalaria.com/ https://www.againstmalaria.com/ [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-malaria-deaths-by-world-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-malaria-deaths-by-... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/malaria#data-quality-definitions https://ourworldindata.org/malaria#data-quality-definitions [3] http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/global-malaria-mortality-between-1980-and-2010-systematic-analysis http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/global-malaria-mo... [4] https://www.givewell.org/ https://www.givewell.org/ [5] Also, the mentioned GFATM: https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/ https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/
- amarant 7y agoGood efforts! I'm still slightly partial to that other approach where they genetically modified the mosquitos themselves to only produce male offspring, in such a fashion that the gene was dominant and thus soon there would be only male mosquitos. Still, if there's been a snag in the road for that approach, this appears to be a viable alternative
- jimworm 7y agoI'd much prefer the (theoretical) gene drive. Bad outcomes for gene drive are either that it doesn't work, or the mosquitoes go extinct in nature and cause more ecological issues by their absence. The worst problem is fixable by keeping live specimens for reintroduction. In fact, since malaria is the target and not the mosquitoes, reintroduction might be a good idea after malaria becomes extinct. Bad outcomes for the fungus is it becoming uncontrollable and starts killing other insects. Reintroduction becomes impossible without engineering a new, immune mosquito. Or that evolution backfires on the spider and causes them to go extinct. Or all of those happening together. Comparing the two, the fungus has all the downsides and more, with zero upside.
- andygates 7y agoThe fungus doesn't affect other insects - this was part of the test. So the worst case is that it becomes uncontrollable and wipes out the mosquitoes.
- pfdietz 7y agoThey've given the fungus a powerful new weapon, so I would be concerned it could evolve to attack new hosts.
- gdy 7y agoIt can mutate
- jimworm 7y agoI was justifying my preference for the gene drive compared with the fungus. The fungus has potential to evolve independently to do different things, the gene drive does not. QED.
- CriticalCathed 7y agoLet's not go about creating fungi that kill animals en-masse.
- jddj 7y agoThese threads about whether it's moral to kill mosquitoes en masse always seem to end up being about unintended consequences and ecosystem collapse. Some points to consider: - Those who study the strains of mosquito (a generous 50 out of ~3500) which spread disease in humans regularly state that they are not a primary food source for any one predator.[1] - Malaria killed 429 000 people in 2015, 90% of those being in Africa, and many of them children.[2] - All of our current control methods have unintended consequences. Take for example that NGOs who offered insecticide-treated mosquito nets to communities found that they were being used in waterways for fishing.[3] - In developed nations we are happily deploying much less targeted solutions without significant levels of complaint (and to counter relatively less serious mosquito-borne diseases), such as the indiscriminate aerial spraying of insecticides over large areas and waterways.[4] Everything is a trade-off, admittedly, and we can never know the full set of consequences in advance (see: the impacts of introduced species), but it might be a useful exercise to weigh your concerns against the benefits to sub-saharan Africa as a whole (and to individual African families) that could materialize were these particular strains of mosquito to be eliminated. And give a little credit to those educated people doing the research into the likelihood of ecosystem collapse and producing reasonable peer-reviewed results. Edit to add: That said, I'm personally partial to the efforts which release genetically-sterilised males. That seems less like the plot of a Hollywood doomsday movie than a spider-venom fungus. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/09/13/what-would-happen-if-we-eliminated-the-worlds-mosquitoes/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/09/13/what-would-hap... [2] https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/ https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/ [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/31/global-use-of-mosquito-nets-for-fishing-endangering-humans-and-wildlife https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/31/global-u... [4] https://www.cdc.gov/zika/vector/aerial-spraying.html https://www.cdc.gov/zika/vector/aerial-spraying.html
- BinaryResult 7y agoI'm curious, if we had the power to just snap our fingers and irradiate all mosquitoes, do we have consensus to do so? I worry about unforeseeable consequences.
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- _Microft 7y agoPeople do not take issue with doing something against malaria but with the proposed method. How could it be stopped if something went wrong? It's not like a chemical agent that you just stop applying when you notice adverse effects. This is a living thing. Living things can procreate, mutate, enter new niches and the only deciding factor is the rate of reproduction. Life doesn't optimize for killing malaria-carrying mosquitoes, it optimizes for rate of reproduction and survival. As soon as there is a mutation that can extend the niche to another target, this will happen. And getting such a match doesn't have to be via a mutation on the fungus either, it can also be one of the target, making it susceptible to it. How do you make sure these things don't happen? I'm worried that the answer is that you can't. (Edit: I'm not even talking about engineered organisms, just have a look at a list of invasive species)
- maxerickson 7y agoThe limiting factor ends up being competition much more than it ends up being rate of reproduction. For example, we'd get sick a lot more if we weren't teeming with more or less symbiotic organisms. A fungus that specializes in infecting Anopheles and also destroys the resource that it is optimized to consume isn't just going to up and start dissolving rubber.
- jakemcgraw 7y agoexcellent andromeda strain reference
- pvaldes 7y ago> A fungus that specializes in infecting Anopheles Research was made in the nine species known of the genus Metarhizum. Some of them are known to science since only 10 years ago when some of the species were better studied and split and hidden species appeared. Some species seem to be specialist, like M. acridi, that target grasshoppers. Other are generalist, like M. anisopliae that can attack insects of seven different orders. Some spores can be diseminated by water and target aquatic larvae, other spread by the air. Surprisingly, M. anisopliae is sold since a few years and used with the purpose to kill beetles of several species, and planned to use it to kill ticks and mosquitoes. Source: Journal of Funghi 2017, 3 (30). So first doubt, are the species used in research really specialist and selective? "A transgenic, broad host-range M. anisopliae strain expressing an insect neurotoxin (AaIT) from Androctonus australis reduced mobility and blood feeding interest of adult Aedes aegypti mosquitoes" "broad-host range" looks the opposite term to "specialist" to me Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128571/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128571/ More things: Mosquitoes die quickly "Since M. pingshaense spores take 2–3 days to penetrate host cuticle, RFP and Met-Hybrid do not cause mortality 24 hours post-infection ... Met-Hybrid achieved >80% mortality within one week with LT80’s of 5.18±0.482 days, 5.54±0.326 days and 5.25±0.269 days for Anopheles coluzzii, An. gambiae and An. Kisumu, respectively". So when it says "fungus rapidly kills mosquitoes", maybe should say, "fungus kills mosquitoes between 2 and five days" "The fungus has been given genes to produce an insecticide, known as a “hybrid”, first extracted from the Australian funnel-web spider and already approved in the US for treating crops." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/malaria-mosquitoes-wiped-out-with-gm-fungus-in-first-controlled-real-world-tests-a8937146.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/malaria-mosquitoes... This is what the independent says. I haven't found an official source for this claim but if true, I don't have words for this fact, only expletives. Has somebody asked american citizens if they agreed to participate in this experiment?
- bayareanative 7y agoIf this works, GMO seem interesting but fraught with all sorts of unknowns. Why can't a similar effort that cleared malaria from the American South after WW2 be applied again, but on a larger scale (sans horrible insecticides)? https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...
- lkbm 7y agoMy understanding was that those horrible insecticides were the primary thing that worked. The link you posted mentions about draining breeding sites, but seems to be saying that DDT application was the biggest component: "It consisted primarily of DDT application to the interior surfaces of rural homes or entire premises in counties where malaria was reported to have been prevalent in recent years."
- pvaldes 7y agoDo you know why 99,99% of the extant spiders are harmless to humans? 1) Because many spiders (but not all) are evolved to target insect methabolism instead mammal methabolism 2) Because spiders aren't bees. The majority are solitary and small, have a limited body size and can just inject a single tiny dose of its extra-potent poisons. 3) and their tiny chelicers are too small and weak to pierce the human skin until reaching a layer with circulatory system so the poison is stopped by the stratum corneum of dead cells in epidermis and other upper layers of skin Now lets suppose that a spider could grow indefinitely and make an unlimited amount of poison, like a fungus And lets suppose that spider poison could be breathed directly and pass from lungs to blood wessels, and acumulated all day like fungus spores entering in your nose What could happen? shalalala Maybe nothing or maybe any insect of any species would be poisoned eventually in presence of spores. They take air directly. Result: collapse of agriculture by simultaneous decrease of suitable pollinators at all levels or maybe humans would have a new type of allergy, part allergy part nervous poisoning. People tired of breathing poison all day after a strong rain? People now allergic to a previously harmless and widespread fungus present everywhere?, in its modified and wild forms?
- pvaldes 7y agoOf course having 3000 species of spiders to choose they needed to play with the cool funnel-web spider. One of the most deadly spiders for humans. Wise choice. Atracotoxins. Stuff extremely toxic for a particular kind of animal: primates, causing pulmonary and cerebral edema in humans. Fortunately for mosquitoes, atracotoxins are relatively weak as insect killer. Big spiders rely in their fangs to subdue the prey. My congratulations for the people that so carefully designed this experiment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- falsedan 7y agoyou realise this is a carefully-controlled scientific experiment and not the latest Telsa model rollout, right?
- craigsmansion 7y agoThe previous magic bullet against Malaria was called Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT. DDT worked very well, initially, but its effects and consequences were intractable and long-term. It's still deployed to various degrees of effectiveness, but usage is far more complex than the initial promise of getting rid of Malaria. A GM fungus 99% kill rate sounds good, but for insect populations that might not be enough. You likely can't use it again to kill 99% of the 1% left, and so on. DDT is a chemical. You can stop using it to mitigate some of the unforeseen side effects. How can one retrieve or stop GM fungi in the wild? What patterns of resistance will emerge? With DDT we got "lucky". It turned out to be overall effective when combined with guidelines and different approaches, but it never rooted out malaria completely by itself in one fell swoop. Creating natural enemies of a pest by genetic modification is a valid approach, but not something to deploy wide-scale at the first hint of success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Malaria_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Malaria_control
- saulrh 7y agoThis is like arguing that the Model T demonstrates that cars will never be safe enough to drive. Yes, there are ways to do this wrong. We have a much better idea what they are and our standards for precision and reliability are much higher. The 1940s are long gone and we aren't the baby boomers. We require seat belts in all cars, houses to be built to fire and electrical codes, and household chemicals to have plain labels and clear warnings. We also now know that we need to specifically target something like three sub-species of mosquito and that if we hit exactly those three the ecological impact will be essentially zero; we've verified that they don't compete with anything and that nothing eats them and that they don't interact in any of the dozens of ecological systems that professional biologists understand that programmers never learn about. We know that we need to hit exactly those sub-species because DDT happened. We know that we need to study things like evolution rates and virulence before deploying engineered organisms; we have, after all, all watched Jurassic Park. The people working on this understand what will happen if their solution isn't good enough. You are not adding anything to this situation except uncharitable negativity. You cite DDT. I'll cite Greenpeace, whose blind opposition to nuclear power is still contributing to the ongoing death of our planet. Don't be Greenpeace.
- sergioisidoro 7y agoThis is scary. Not because GM or mosquito populations. This is scary because we don't know enough of fungi role in the environment. Yes, we know this species infects the mosquitos but what else? What other roles does it have? And with fungi this is especially dangerous because spores get literally everywhere and are hard to eliminate! Unless we can ensure the fungus is engineered to not generate viable spores on a second generation this is a recipe for disaster.
- ryanmercer 7y ago"GM fungus has mutated, hundreds of thousands of pick one - wheat - ladybugs - syrphid flies - bats - bees dying daily"
- pvaldes 7y agoLets put it simple, this is terrorism. We talk about a plan to disseminate a potent lethal poison claiming moral reasons. Not unlike releasing gas sarin in metro (for highly moral reasons also, everybody has a good reason stuck in their head). Killing millions to save thousands and so. The main difference here is that is a lethal stuff regenerated constantly and released in the air at random days. Yup, this could be worse than sarin attacks. Any fail would be permanent. There are dozens of spider poisons known that are weak or harmless for people. They had choosen instead the poison that is worst... not for the insects, the worst for us. The more efficient killing people. And they plan to give this people's serial killer to fungi, to spread it under the soil and into the air. Fungi kingdom is a poorly studiated group of life beings, with a sophisticate defensive methabolism and a complex ecology. Several species can associate and fuse into one (lichens) and two species can be different forms of the same species; therefore there is some risk of horizontal propagation of the modified gene to other species with unpredictable comsequences. Forget pot smokers, this people should receive inmediately a visit from FBI in their headquarters. They have a lot of things to explain, and I'm talking seriously.
- shawnz 7y agoI think you mean negligence and not terrorism
- pvaldes 7y agoI can't help to wonder myself how they though that releasing in the nature a creature able to synthesize venom of funnel-web spider was a good idea. Is astonishing. Are this organisations, supposedly full of smart people, so hierarchical that nobody could point to the obvious elephant in the room? Even a child could see it coming.
- pHollda 7y ago, Kj.hhde
- BinaryResult 7y ago2 layers of mosquito netting is all that's keeping this from going rogue? We're cool I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong.
- ladyattis 7y agoThe issue I can see from such techniques is the same issue with all pesticides and that is are these species we've deemed pests necessary for the food web? I know it seems silly but apparently mosquitoes are a major biomass source for fish and other species which may not be easily substituted with a less dangerous one. Maybe the more correct answer isn't killing off the mosquitoes which feed off humans but find a way to eliminate malaria itself. I'm being naive in my assessment, to be honest, but that's just my thoughts on the matter.
- ajnin 7y agoHow effective is a double layer of mosquito netting at stopping fungal spores ? The workers in the photos don't seem to be wearing any sort of protection equipment either. This seems like a very carelessly conducted experiment. The fungus is in the wild at this point. Fungi are very persistent and our immune system is not well equipped to deal with them, much more care should be required to avoid release in the environment of a pathogen agent not thoroughly tested and evaluated.
- Amygaz 7y agoThis paper is just a stunt. I searched for previous publications with the same fungus against anopheles, and 2015 study showed a natural isolate that was already 90% lethal. That strain also kill some rice grubs. The controlled installations in the picture look pretty piss-poor, such that GMO is already in the wild by now.
- not_a_cop75 7y agoThe comparison to historic disasters caused by the introduction of invasive species can not be understated. Maybe the net positive is good, but there are still negative effects as of yet undiscovered. It would be nice to find a solution with only net positive, but we seem to live in a world of tradeoffs.
- jvanderbot 7y agoMalaria is a leading killer of humans. 212 million cases in 2015 alone. 70% of deaths are young children. (who stats) Not to mention other diseases spread by mosquitoes. Im down for trying.
- 0xffff2 7y agoDo you mean overstated? If the comparison can't be understated, that implies that it's completely irrelevant and should be ignored; the rest of your comment seems to argue the opposite.
- oxymoran 7y agoI have no issue with modifying genetics normally, but why in the world would you modify a fungus to produce spider toxin? Fungi are far more advanced and intertwined with the biosphere than most people realize. What if they escape and run amok? Why not just modify the mosquito which has been shown to work?
- WhompingWindows 7y agoWhy would they run amok? Does the spider toxin give them a survival advantage relative to its energetic cost? If the toxin merely allows them to kill the insects they infect, I believe it'd just tamp down the population without downright eliminating it.
- kgc 7y agoWait, but how many will be in the next generation since 13 survived?
- gwern 7y agoFulltext: https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2019-lovett.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2019-lovett.pdf
- mamon 7y agoThose mosquitoes are innocent, in fact they have the same right to live on this planet as humans. Stop this mosquitocide!
- duncanmeech 7y agoThis is a fast way to kill mosquitos and an even faster way of creating toxin resistant mosquitos.