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A radical new plan for exterminating disease carrying mosquitoes

Credits: WikiImages / Pixabay

Mosquitoes are responsible for around 830,000 deaths in the world every year, and are more life-threatening than any other animal on Earth, humans included. In order to address the problem, Bill and Melinda Gates have pledged 4.1 million dollars to British laboratory Oxitec, according to the website Business Insider.

The majority of mosquito related deaths (over 440,000) are due to malaria, a disease which is transmitted from person to person via a unicellular parasite that is transferred by female mosquitoes when they suck on people’s blood. Bill and Melinda Gates have been working to eradicate the deadly illness since the creation of their foundation in 2000, donating around 2 billion dollars to various organisations. The foundation is now pledging 4.1 million American dollars to a new approach: deploying an army of male mosquitoes exclusively intended to kill their own descendants.

Oxitec, a genetic engineering company that came out of Oxford University in 2002, have in fact created a completely new class of mosquitoes, called “Friendly Mosquitoes”. These genetically modified male insects are tasked with mating with females that may potentially be carriers of the virus, in order to transmit a special gene. This gene would mean that the inseminated females’ progeny would die before reaching adulthood. The male progeny – which do not bite – can continue to live and continue to transmit the gene to further females. According to the company, they should be able to spread this self-limiting gene for up to ten generations.

These new Oxitec mosquitoes could be ready for initial field tests between now and Autumn 2020, but the company have encountered a certain resistance towards uses of genetic modification in the past. Oxitec hope to trial some of its other laboratory bred mosquitoes in the Florida Keys this Summer, although residents have in the past expressed strong opposition to the idea. Residents in fact voted against authorising genetically modified mosquitoes in 2016.

Oxitec are not the only company to trial genetically modified mosquitoes in the prevention of malaria. A group of scientists from the Imperial College of London are also working on a mutation aimed at sterilising malaria carrying female mosquitoes.

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