apprehensive about Zika ? think your reverence quench : a biotech startupis testingan army of bacteria - persuade mosquito designed , effectively , to sterilize the mosquito that transmits Zika and dengue fever . You ’ll sleep easy tonight knowing that an all - out mosquito war is brew !
Update 10/26/16 : TheMosquito War has formally been scheduled to startin Brazil and Columbia at the beginning of 2017 .
MosquitoMateis the American company developing these slayer mosquitoes , though there are other company , universities , and researchers working on like strategies . The conception is pretty simple : put a bacteria , called Wolbachia , into manful mosquito , and set them spare into wild mosquito populations . When they twin with the females , the bacteria prevent the eggs from hatching , which essentially creates a sterilized population and a lot of tense mosquito relationships . After the Male are fall in a number of clock time to diffuse their deadly come , the total universe dwindles .
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All this talking about lab - train mosquitoes wag state of war to sterilize a angry universe of Zika - carrying monsters seems like it would go over just o.k. with the great unwashed living on ( or under ) the battlefield . Hah ! In a regulative oddity , MosquitoMate is ask for the Environmental Protection Agency to approve its skeeters as a pesticide ; equate this to British company Oxitec , whichmodifies a gene in mosquitoesto make them " ego - limiting , " which fundamentally means that cunning baby mosquitoes born with the adapted cistron ca n’t live on to adulthood in the wild . So sad . Florida Keys residentsaren’t exactly happywith the caller ’s proposition to let loose these genetically modified insects into their community of interests , a process that ’s approve by the Food & Drug Administration – a request to prevent the tribulation hasnearly 170,000 signatures .
Why is everyone freaked out about releasing man - made mosquito into the wild ?
The websites of both MosquitoMate and Oxitec whirl reassurance that their products – again , mosquitoes – are dependable and wo n’t make any problems at all , why is everyone freaked out about release homo - made mosquitoes into the wild ? MosquitoMate’staglineis even the assuasive and not - at - all fascist " build up intellectual alternatives for mosquito control . " One of the proposed benefits is less reliance on pesticides , though without any major tests completed , it ’s insufferable to say whether inciting mosquito warfare will work as a long - term disease - direction strategy . Preliminary results in Brazil , though , indicatethat the GM mosquitoes do seem to reduce the total universe .
And at leastsomekind of scheme is need ; before an outbreak in 2009 , dengue pyrexia ( carry by the same mosquito that channelize Zika ) had n’t made a aboriginal appearance in Florida since 1934 . It ’s probably not choke aside anytime soon . But there ’s hope ! Since humans have apretty goodrecordwhen it comes to mess with the surround , you have no reason to fear the impending Great Mosquito War .
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