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Genetically modified mosquitoes breed in Brazil
- cameronbrown 7y agoEnough people said this was a bad idea to expect this outcome.
- juskrey 7y agoOh yeah, but they were so obviously anti-science!
- magashna 7y agoThere was a thread the other day with outright anger that we should be doing anything to curb Malaria, including these kind of tests.
- projektfu 7y agoThere was an equal amount of anger that anyone might suggest caution.
- corodra 7y agoThat's the problem. A lot of people thought that saying "This won't work and could make things potentially worse" was equivalent to "I think people should die of Malaria". I remember this experiment coming out on HN (different account) and voiced that it's would more than likely not work and if we're lucky, won't have an adverse affect. I got ripped as a flat out racist because I wanted black people to die of malaria. We're better off trying to increase dragonfly populations to consume mosquitoes (which they do). But then we risk increase sparrow and other bird populations with the increase in food supply, which could then migrate to consuming more grain crops. Currently larvacide using 2 different hormones (depending on targeted breeds), not found in any other animal or insect thus far seems to be the best route in curbing mosquito populations with, after 20 years of field use, have no to little impact on the ecosystem.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoThe problem with those arguments is that no potential harm through such genetic modifications has been demonstrated yet. Even those mosquitoes surviving has done no harm. A downside to Hormones is that you need to find the breeding grounds. Potentially every puddle or container of water. However, the modified male mosquitoes are like homing missiles.
- libraryatnight 7y agoAh yes, because over the course of humanity the "no harm demonstrated yet" has panned out beautifully. We're compounding interest on our "Well it seems fine for now?" damages.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoWell, there is a very broad search for potential mechanisms to cause harm, and nothing has been found so far. After decades of trying...
- corodra 7y agoAnd again, just like the others in the past who I argued with, you read nothing I put down. You saw hormone and knee jerked. The hormones in question are not found in other animals, and has been widely tested for a decade prior to field use in Florida. Working off my memory from diving into this a few years ago, the hormones are what regulate the dissolve rate of the shell pupa to adult stage. It's introduced at a seasonal time for the larva to be in bodies of water, after certain storms. The hormone they put in, stop the shell/casing from softening so the adult mosquito is essentially buried alive. The reason why the gm wasn't going to work was the low affected rate of mosquitoes. In rainy areas, the breeding cycle and amount is high enough so about a few months later, they're either resistant due to evolution or the affected pools were just absolutely meaningless to begin with. Let's add in, Ae. aegypti eggs, and most aedes, for example, are recorded to survive 8-14 months dry and hatch around a week after first moisture. The whole "experiment" was already a complete waste of time from day 1. The mosquito is a resistant SOB survivor to begin with. These "homing missiles", which failed, equates to using a single shot pellet rifle against a swarm of yellow jackets. Aedes is not a genus to take lightly. And actual field scientists who deal with it on a serious basis and do actual real useful work, know that. The breeding grounds are typical too. It's only after heavy storms where people have buckets out are real problems. And new developments that displace land. But they're normally figured out in a few months and thrown on the list. My fear with gm in anything in the animalia kingdom comes to what genes become expressed more with the lack of expression in another. Especially over time if the sterilization factor didn't pane out as well as hoped. A 0.01% fail rate in sterilization to a creature like Ae. Aegypti (150-300 egg lay rate, 2-3 lay cycles, 10 day egg to adult) can be disastrous. Look, if the prior articles about the research went "We have evidence that it works, but we're afraid of unexpected fallout, thus we're testing for any potential adverse effects..." I'm chill with that. I want to see that succeed. They understand the risks and work to minimize those risks as best as possible. Cool. But every god damn time I see gene manipulators do anything with a wide scale insect like mosquitoes, they just Silicon Valley rush into it "Yea, we did it for 2 months and it works and we're going to release it into the wild". Like a Cali group wanted to do a few months ago, I want to scream. It's Mao's dumbass 4 pest crusade all fucking over again. Without a shred of thought into such a complex system that is the environment. Yea, break things fast. Who cares about consequences. Not like we have enough environmental fucking problems as is. Let's play Life on Earth on hardcore mode some more. But oh no, a program that was in lab research for a decade before actual use. University oversight and testing to make sure only minimal amounts are used so any type of kickback can be contained quickly. And after 2 decades of use. That bad. Real bad. We should do shitty testing for a few months and consider it golden. Let's not forget, there's a group of assholes doing the same by genetically modifying a fungus to produce a type of venom to kill mosquitoes. I'd laugh at that stupid idea if it was left to hollywood. But there's a research group literally trying to do that, and they're having some initial success. I am just absolutely sick and tired of people thinking 2+2+I want to save the world=22. And that's all I see in this garbage. While these red herring dumbass ideas have large sums of money thrown at them, people ARE FUCKING DYING because of this instead of that money going into either using proven methods or policies to minimize breeding rates or even just medical aid. I'm all for finding new ways. I wouldn't visit a tech news aggregate if I wasn't. But "new" doesn't automatically mean it's better. Without that respect to reality, it's doomed to fail.
- human20190310 7y agoConcern about "unknown unknowns" tends to be characterized as unscientific.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoThere should be a difference, but there rarely is. There is broad search going on for potential mechanisms with which such modifications could cause harm. None have been found. At some point it is time for limited experiments in the wild. We now have evidence that the "fail-safes" don't work as intended. Maybe you need to have multiple such genes. It's a different situation with nuclear energy, with multiple theoretically impossible accidents. You could categorize those as unknown unknowns, but, I mean, they have been known to happen...
- bayesian_horse 7y agoThere is no evidence of harm yet. There are only a few mosquitoes with a bit more junk-DNA.
- danShumway 7y agoIt's not about evidence of harm, its about evidence that the safeguard didn't work. Imagine I was demoing an elevator with a backup stopping mechanism that kept it from going into free fall. So I hoist the elevator 10 feet up and cut the line, and the mechanism doesn't work, it falls immediately to the ground. Would it be reasonable for me to say, "Nobody was hurt, the elevator only dropped 10 feet, so there's no real problem"? I would want the elevator sent back to design/engineering before I was willing to put any people on it. The mosquitoes were not supposed to be able to breed, and they did. Not being able to breed was the safety valve. In this case, because the modifications were very minor, the effects of that are pretty minor, just a tiny bit of junk DNA. Because the rollout was small, the effects are small. I only hoisted the elevator 10 feet. But before we doing larger rollouts or more sophisticated modifications, we should make sure that our safety valves actually work. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that we collectively prove we can get small things right before we start doing large things.
- pvaldes 7y agoIs the common problem. Put a man in front of a clift and say "jump it". He can refuse. Now throw 200 millions in that clift. Eventually somebody will need to jump the clift to try to recover the money, and will do it At some point there was so many money spent that thinking "this was a bad idea, lets close the project and go home", is not an option over the table anymore, not unless the project is done by a government or so.
- learc83 7y agoThe title is very misleading. "Strengthened" had nothing to do with the genetically modified genes. They released non-local mosquitoes that had been genetically modified, and because those mosquitoes bred with local mosquitoes (same species, just from a different location), the local mosquitoes now have a wider gene pool. The wider gene pool is what the article is referring to as being "strengthened", not any observable difference.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y agoI’m ignorant on this topic, but aren’t animals with a wider gene pool usually more robust?
- AstralStorm 7y agoWe're not talking wider gene pool, were higher generation crosses with a modified subspecies. This is somewhat different as original sterile flies were designed to produce low viability first crosses. It remains to be seen if they're more or less robust. Any outcome is possible. They could also be more or less fecund. They will be harder to kill off via an engineered program like a disease or maybe sooner insecticides.
- sbierwagen 7y agoNot always. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreeding_depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreeding_depression
- fenwick67 7y agoThis page has some malicious ads on it that keep redirecting me to phishing sites (only on mobile Firefox apparently)
- CryptoBanker 7y agoIf you're using mobile FF why wouldn't you take advantage of its ability to use ad blockers?
- dr_dshiv 7y agoIf at first you don't succeed, you might want to watch Jurassic Park again
- inciampati 7y agoLife finds a way, and more so when populations are huge and genomes are diverse. Not exactly a surprising result. Maybe with another ten or twenty years of experience and technique in genome sequencing and interpretation we will be able to engineer a reliable gene drive.
- shiyoon 7y agothe risk in making a mistake doing these trial runs could be huge though......they still don't know the impact this will have on the local ecosystem there across generations....Gene driving is a pandoras box that has the potential to decimate entire ecosystems by accident with irreversible consequences. I keep thinking this is how the zombie apocalypse will happen lol
- WalterBright 7y ago> I keep thinking this is how the zombie apocalypse will happen lol Since zombies violate the laws of physics, there's no need to worry about that.
- ganitarashid 7y agoLife, uh, finds a way https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dMjQ3hA9mEA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dMjQ3hA9mEA
- beefman 7y agoInstead of this editorialized garbage, why not link directly to the paper? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6 Or at least to better newscopy https://www.dw.com/en/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-breed-in-brazil/a-50414340 https://www.dw.com/en/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-breed-...
- ianai 7y agoDespite this failure, I still think the species should be targeted for extinction. What are our options?
- AstralStorm 7y agoNone. Anything we have would have worked on the original problem if deployed.
- dclowd9901 7y agoEliminate their food sources. Unfortunately that would mean the extinction of any and every soft skinned blood carrying on the planet.
- pvaldes 7y agoIs an extreme solution but definitely would work and valuable because can suggest a partial solution to reduce risk levels. Put a pool of water into a building dome in the middle of sahara and play and experiment with them all that you want. Land is cheap and your critters will remain in the area and can't go away. But in Brazil... come on... do it in some desert at least.
- bencollier49 7y agoAnd presumably all the birds will have plenty of other things to eat, right?
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- noname120 7y agoThe linked article (edit: it has been changed) is rather confusing so I'd like to highlight the fact that the underlying study[1] hints at two very specific observations: 1) The effectiveness started to decrease after 18 months: the population of Ae. aegypti progressively returned back to its normal levels—and this despite the continued release every week of 450 thousand males of the modified strain. 2) Some hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature. Even though it was thought previously that they would be too weak to reproduce and thus not pass the modified genes to their offspring. The first observation is concerning because this means that this technique might only work in the short-term. This is probably not a silver bullet to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases. The second observation is probably much more worrying because it hints at unwanted side effects. We don't know yet the exact consequences of having these hybrid strains roaming free in nature. The most likely explanation however is that since they are weaker, they'll be progressively selected out and disappear. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6.pdf
- phkahler 7y ago3) Two other species from different regions moved in during the population drop. Now they're I interbreeding which may lead to more robust variants.
- maxerickson 7y agoThe two other species are the species the released mosquitoes were hybridized from. They didn't move in, they were brought in as part of the experiment.
- koboll 7y agoThe lesson here is expect failure and don't do something stupid like introduce a nonnative mosquito species, even if you're sure they won't be able to breed. Because who knows, you could be wrong.
- markbnj 7y agoI really didn't get this idea when it was first proposed, and I still don't. I'm about as far from an expert as you can get, but it seems to me that if you modify the genes of a wild population such that they produce less viable offspring you've just reduced their evolutionary fitness. That would leave a gap to be exploited by the members of the species whose genes you did not modify. On the surface anyway it seems like that might be what happened here.
- blisterpeanuts 7y agoI remember Oxitec or a related entity mentioning at the time that it was not a permanent solution, but would need to be repeated every year to re-suppress the population.
- NasKe 7y agoThey are not trying to modify the genes of the wild population. They release a bunch of males that have this "lethal" gene, diminishing the size of the next generation. It is not a permanent solution, but it can be used during the summer to control the population size.
- jaequery 7y agoHope scientists had a plan B and plan C in place.
- JackFr 7y agoAt a macro level, one would expect that the 'baseline' mosquito population represents an equilibrium level due to competing factors within in the local environment. While it seems very clear that releasing the GM mosquitos would never permanently alter this equilibrium, it's not obvious to me (not a biologist) that it would even work with continuing release of the GM mosquitos. It seems to assume that the limiting factor on population is the number of offspring. If the limiting factor were competition for food or some other resource it seems like other mosquitos would fill in to replace the GM ones who died early.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoAs far as I know they only release males, so the males will inevitably impregnate a certain number of normal females, which will have weaker offspring. So no, it's not a permanent fix, because the survivors will repopulate the ecosystem over time. But there was a significant collapse of the population for a time. And that's a win, in terms of Malaria prevention.
- bencollier49 7y agoAnd a loss, for all their predators?
- bayesian_horse 7y agoThey can cope. There is nothing natural about any population size in the mosquitoes we are concerned about. They don't procreate in natural ponds, most of the times, but in whatever bodies of water the Humans provided them through one way or another. And even then, those populations boom and bust all the time, without further intervention. We'd just rather like them to go more bust than boom, in general.
- littlestymaar 7y ago> And that's a win, in terms of Malaria prevention. This experiment was not about Malaria (spread by the Anopheles genus) this is about Aedes aegypti the species which spreads Zika and Dengue fever.
- daxfohl 7y agoI keep hearing that mosquitoes are not ecologically important, and their extinction would have little to no ecological effect. However one indirect ecological consequence if something like this worked would be the migration of mammals to regions previously largely uninhabitable due to mosquitoes. Would such a migration and/or population increase have some ecological effect? I don't think anyone has explored this potential outcome thoroughly.
- giorgioz 7y agoI don't think that regions uninhabitable by mammals because of mosquitoes do exist. Female mosquitoes do require warm blood extraced by animals to depose eggs so if no animal live in a region also mosquitoes would not be able to reproduce there.
- arbuge 7y agoAre there any such regions to begin with? If they were uninhabitable, mosquitoes themselves would be absent, given that they require a blood supply.
- powfeu 7y agothey mean uninhabitable (or not usually inhabited) by certain species (though other species do live there) which might then chose to live there in the absence of the mosquitoes
- bayesian_horse 7y agoI've heard that human populations in Africa tended to stay away from the regions with the Malaria problems.
- littlestymaar 7y agoIt's almost the opposite [1][2], and it's not surprising actually. People tend to forget what malaria is: it's an epidemic and it is not caused by the Anopheles, it is spread by the Anopheles if there is a pool of contaminated humans to feed from. That's why you have anopheles in almost every all European countries (including Russia) and also in the US[3], but no malaria, because the epidemic was eradicated there. [1]: map of the African population: http://www.utl-morlaix.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/afrique_population-zones.png http://www.utl-morlaix.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/afriqu... [2]: map of malaria prevalence in Africa https://www.populationdata.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Afrique-Malaria-prevalence-2015.png https://www.populationdata.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Af... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anopheles-range-map.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anopheles-range-map.png
- rhacker 7y agoIs this part of the debug.com project? Or something else?
- benj111 7y agoHow are these mosquitoes being bred/modified? As I understand it, current gene editing is less scalpel and more hammer. Is there therefore a risk of more mutations?
- awinter-py 7y agoneed some DRM in there so those pirate wild mosquitoes can't misuse our proprietary genes
- phyzome 7y ago« However, it was already known from previous laboratory experiments that a small proportion of about three to four percent of OX513A descendants can reach adulthood; the scientists had assumed that those would be too weak to reproduce. » Ugh! This release should never have passed review.
- discounthotel1 7y agoExactly, it boggles my mind that this passed review.
- ImaCake 7y agoI agree. Any biologist worth their salt would see that result and imagine the outcome that we got. Unlike physics and chemistry, where a set of trials will behave in a mathematically nice way, biology experiments are notoriously variable. You will get outliers, and they will be weirder than you can imagine.
- crawfordcomeaux 7y agoWhen will we stop pretending like silver bullet solutions exist and that we can tamper with natural systems like this without introducing impactful unintended consequences? We've repeatedly observed that what happens in the lab has little to do with what happens in nature, yet we ignore this lesson routinely and dangerously. Does science have a learning disorder? Could it be, in part, a lack of humility?
- Nasrudith 7y agoScience can no more have a learning disorder than binary numbering systems can have a color, books can think. To blame science is a hopeless reification and insane as a murderer trying to claim innocence because it was crime that killed the victim and not them. We have in fact solved mosquitoes before but I suspect you would like the side effects even less because everyone would. Filling in swamps and wetlands completely, and mass less than selective insecticide sprayings were how it was done before. They did in fact sicken and kill people through side effects via reduced water quality and exposure to toxins but far fewer than malaria even in the short term. Humanity is frankly terrifying when they are angered enough to cause extinctions deliberately instead of through callousness or accident. Genetic engineering /is/ trying the less harmful option.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- WMCRUN 7y agoOriginal article also had a phishing virus attached...
- bayesian_horse 7y agoFor me this is an indication that such modified organisms should have independent fail-safes. Overall I think the modified genes will be extinguished rather than fixate, as most low-frequency alleles do.
- pvirgiliu 7y agoi accidentally the mosquito.
- fnordsensei 7y agoRadiolab did an episode on this effort a while back: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/kill-em-all https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/kill-em-all
- twodave 7y agoHaven’t they seen the movie Mimic?! Shudders
- tomp 7y agoHow wrong am I to draw the conclusion from this, that people claiming that GMOs are "completely safe" (i.e. cannot have unexpected side effects, such as creation of super-species that completely crowds out other, non-GMO and now inferior, species in the specific niche, or the migration/expression of toxin-producing genes in unexpected places) are full of bullshit? That's my knee-jerk conclusion, I'd be really interested in hearing counterarguments.
- wetpaws 7y agoLife by definition is a process of genetic modification
- anigbrowl 7y agoTruisms don't make for productive discussions. Picture yourself receiving a cancer diagnosis followed by your statement above.
- wetpaws 7y agoHow is cancer related to gmo? You know what is also bad? Traffic jam and rain. And flu. And clowns, I hate them.
- anigbrowl 7y agoOh, you're just trolling. Bye.
- kortilla 7y agoFear-mongering doesn’t make for productive discussions either. These mosquitoes are not super mosquitoes so they don’t lend any credence to the anti-GMO tropes. Picture yourself receiving a cancer diagnosis and then hearing that tobacco is organic non-GMO.
- tomp 7y ago> Picture yourself receiving a cancer diagnosis and then hearing that tobacco is organic non-GMO. Oh come on this is such a ridiculous point. No these mosquitoes are not super-mosquitoes - I never implied so. However, these mosquitoes are a GMO experiment gone wrong - fortunately this "wrong" doesn't mean "world-destroying" (so far), but just "unintended", but that's kind-of my point - who's to say that the next time a GMO experiment goes "wrong" it won't be a bit more wrong...
- anigbrowl 7y agoMaybe we should pay Jeff Goldblum to stop doing movies and just visit research departments in character.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- seba_dos1 7y agoDiscussion from year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083755 and half a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19224865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19224865
- foobarbecue 7y agoI like this word "experminet."
- blondie9x 7y agoThis is the biggest problem with gene modification. In regards to food and animals. If the experiment or area the modification is used is not very very carefully controlled the risk of spread globally in a closed planetary ecosystem is very high. You therefore have insane risk of introducing the modification to the entire population.
- jnnrz 7y agoI'm really disappointed in some of these comments. They're borderline anti-science.
- test1997 7y agoDanger to humanity