| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Obits- |
| Potential bye bye Anopheles gambiae Skeeter |
| 2018-09-26 |
| [Asharq Al-Awsat] Scientists said Monday they had succeeded for the first time in wiping out an entire population of malaria-carrying mosquitos in the lab using a gene editing tool to programme their extinction. So-called gene drive technology works by forcing evolution's hand, ensuring that an engineered trait is passed down to a higher proportion of offspring -- across many generations -- than would have occurred naturally. In experiments with the species Anopheles gambiae, scientists at Imperial College London tweaked a gene known as doublesex so that more females in each generation could no longer bite or reproduce. After only eight generations, there were no females left and the population collapsed due to lack of offspring. "This breakthrough shows that gene drive can work, providing hope in the fight against a disease that has plagued mankind for centuries," said lead author Andrea Crisanti, a professor in Imperial's Department of Life Sciences. Previous attempts by the same team and others to induce the genetically programmed extinction of mosquitos in the laboratory ran into "resistance" in the form of mutations that fought back against the high-tech engineering. - A TIMELY BREAKTHROUGH - The next step will be to test the technology in a confined laboratory setting that mimics a tropical environment, said Crisanti. "It will be at least five-to-ten years before we consider testing any mosquitoes with gene drive in the wild," he said in a statement. The doublesex gene targeted in the experiments is deeply "conserved", meaning that is formed tens or even hundreds of millions of years ago and is today shared by many insects with only minor variations. "This suggests the technology could be used in the future to specifically target other disease-carrying insects," the researchers said. Scientists not involved in the study described it as a timely breakthrough. "Traditional approaches to controlling mosquitoes -- especially the use of insecticides -- is becoming less effective," mainly due to the build-up of resistance, said Cameron Webb, a clinical lecturer at the University of Sydney. The new research, published in Nature Biotechnology, was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has poured close to $100 million (95 million euros) into the development of gene drive technology -- especially via the research consortium Target Malaria -- with the aim of eradicating the disease. The US military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has also invested tens of millions of dollars. "It is incumbent on DARPA to perform this research and develop technologies that can protect against accidental and intentional misuse," DARPA spokesman Jared Adams told AFP last December. |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #6 #5 I can see something like this working if you can introduce enough modified mosquitoes to form a significant fraction of the breeding population They do. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-09-26 17:51 |
| #5 I can see something like this working if you can introduce enough modified mosquitoes to form a significant fraction of the breeding population. But if you can only introduce a minuscule fraction, how is the genetic modification going to spread? The descendants of the modified strains, by construction, don't reproduce as quickly as the native ones. |
| Posted by: james 2018-09-26 17:44 |
| #4 Won't be allowed. That'd be a Genetically Modified Organism. GMO=BAD. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2018-09-26 09:39 |
| #3 The hard part was fitting P*ssy Hats on the females. |
| Posted by: Snakes Peacock6563 2018-09-26 07:15 |
| #2 Scientists said Monday they had succeeded for the first time in wiping out an entire population of malaria-carrying mosquitos in the lab using a gene editing tool to programme their extinction. Cause they couldn't program the female of the species to go full femnazi? |
| Posted by: P2kontheroad 2018-09-26 06:55 |
| #1 Can it be mixed with a polio vaccine? |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2018-09-26 02:45 |