A British company wants to release genetically modified mosquitoes to wipe out an aggressive, disease-causing species threatening to invade Australia.
British company Oxitec has applied to release GM mosquitoes in Australia to tackle dengueThe technology in Australia would target two invasive disease-causing species, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday.
How does this approach work, what are the concerns — and how will the DNA-tweaked mosquitoes get here?That’s why Oxitec, which grew out of Oxford University, has developed a line of self-limiting or what they call “friendly”When the modified males mate with wild females, the gene passes into their offspring and overloads mosquito cells with a protein called tTAV.
The next part is like breeding sea monkeys: you just add water, and the eggs hatch. A few hundred harmless males spawn from each box and begin their work, bringing down the mosquito population in the surrounding hectare.An advantage of Oxitec’s approach is that male mosquitoes are female-seeking precision missiles, unlike the blunt instrument of “fogging” or spraying large areas with insecticide.
“It’s not like a genetically altered species that carries that gene on ad infinitum,” he says. “The gene is only inherited by the male mosquitoes, and so with every generation it’s halved, and therefore it doesn’t last beyond a fixed number of generations.”by an independent team of researchers found something troubling: wild populations had inherited fragments of the genetically modified mosquitoes’ genome during a Brazilian trial.
Other communities voted in favour, however, and Morrison says Oxitec has ended up “oversubscribed for households wanting to host egg boxes in their front yard”.Working in tandem with locals is top of mind for Morrison and Sutton as they eye the Torres Strait as a potential launchpad for Australian trials of Oxitec mozzies.
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