Remember when "GE" was a company's monogram more than an acronym for Genetic Engineering, and "we bring good things to life" was the company's slogan for a generation? Now that bringing things to life is tantalizingly close to reality, as with woolly mammoths, it's time to remember Jeff Goldblum's moment from Jurassic Park, "Life will find a way":
A British company named Oxitec has produced a male mosquito of the species Aedes aegypti which renders sterile offspring of any females with which they mate. This species carries a number of diseases including dengue and Zeka fever.
After some years' effort, they got these "Friendly" mosquitos (the company's term) labeled a pesticide, so regulatory hurdles were considerably less difficult, and hundreds of millions have been released into areas of Florida and Texas.
I first saw this story in an article that labored to suggest a link between the Friendly mosquito and recent cases of malaria, coincidentally also in Florida (4 cases) and Texas (1). Yours truly lives in Sarasota County, where the Florida malaria cases were, so my antennae perked up. But malaria is transmitted by a different species, the Anopheles, and the "drop area," so to speak, was in Monroe County, on the western side, southernmost tip of the Florida peninsula, quite some distance from Sarasota County. So my antennae lay back down, like Ray Walston's in My Favorite Martian.
But before the Friendly mosquitos were deployed here, they were tried out to our south, Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes Transfer Genes into a Natural Population | Scientific Reports (nature.com). The Friendlies also had little florescent genes implanted, which makes them traceable:
Cue Mr. Goldblum.
So I'm leery of unintended consequences of various attempts to fool Mother Nature, going at least back to rabbits in Australia.
On the other hand, maybe little florescent taillights were God's idea in the first place, when he introduced lightning bugs, my favorite, mosquito-eating insect.
A British company named Oxitec has produced a male mosquito of the species Aedes aegypti which renders sterile offspring of any females with which they mate. This species carries a number of diseases including dengue and Zeka fever.
After some years' effort, they got these "Friendly" mosquitos (the company's term) labeled a pesticide, so regulatory hurdles were considerably less difficult, and hundreds of millions have been released into areas of Florida and Texas.
I first saw this story in an article that labored to suggest a link between the Friendly mosquito and recent cases of malaria, coincidentally also in Florida (4 cases) and Texas (1). Yours truly lives in Sarasota County, where the Florida malaria cases were, so my antennae perked up. But malaria is transmitted by a different species, the Anopheles, and the "drop area," so to speak, was in Monroe County, on the western side, southernmost tip of the Florida peninsula, quite some distance from Sarasota County. So my antennae lay back down, like Ray Walston's in My Favorite Martian.
But before the Friendly mosquitos were deployed here, they were tried out to our south, Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes Transfer Genes into a Natural Population | Scientific Reports (nature.com). The Friendlies also had little florescent genes implanted, which makes them traceable:
... Approximately 450 thousand males of this strain were released each week for 27 months in Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil.
[...]
This strain also carries a fluorescent protein gene that allows detection of OX513A X wild type F1 offspring. Release of this strain in large numbers has been effective in reducing populations of Ae. aegypti by up to 85%5. The largest such releases to date have been carried out in the city of Jacobina in Bahia, Brazil6. We monitored the Jacobina Ae. aegypti population to determine if the releases have affected the genetics of the natural population by transferring genes, introgressing. If lethality is complete, such releases should result only in population reduction and not affect the genetics of the target population. However, it is known that, under laboratory conditions, 3–4% of the offspring from matings of OX513A with wild type do survive to adulthood although they are weak and it is not known if they are fertile4.
[...]
This strain also carries a fluorescent protein gene that allows detection of OX513A X wild type F1 offspring. Release of this strain in large numbers has been effective in reducing populations of Ae. aegypti by up to 85%5. The largest such releases to date have been carried out in the city of Jacobina in Bahia, Brazil6. We monitored the Jacobina Ae. aegypti population to determine if the releases have affected the genetics of the natural population by transferring genes, introgressing. If lethality is complete, such releases should result only in population reduction and not affect the genetics of the target population. However, it is known that, under laboratory conditions, 3–4% of the offspring from matings of OX513A with wild type do survive to adulthood although they are weak and it is not known if they are fertile4.
So I'm leery of unintended consequences of various attempts to fool Mother Nature, going at least back to rabbits in Australia.
On the other hand, maybe little florescent taillights were God's idea in the first place, when he introduced lightning bugs, my favorite, mosquito-eating insect.
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