With climate change driving up global temperatures, mosquitoes are moving to new areas and spreading malaria in the United States for the first time in 20 years.
But researchers at U.C. San Diego are working on a method to root out those disease-carrying bugs for good – without needing to use any harmful chemicals or insecticides.
UCSD biologist Omar Akbari told KNX News that since only female mosquitoes can transmit diseases, the goal is to eliminate the female population. They plan to do that by genetically modifying male mosquitoes’ DNA to stop them from producing any daughters.
“The goal is to release these genetically modified male mosquitoes at any life stage,” he explained. “Those males will then go find females, they’ll mate with them, those females will then only produce male offspring.”
Those male offspring will inherit their fathers’ genetic modifications, continuing the suppression of females for several more generations. Because of this chain effect, just a few lab-altered mosquitoes could eventually wipe out an entire species.
Since only a handful of the more than 3000 mosquito species on earth can spread harmful diseases, Akbari said this mass femicide won’t have any serious ecological consequences.
“We’re targeting only those species that transmit pathogens to us in a very species-specific way,” he said.
The UCSD team’s strategy was effective in the lab, and modeling shows it could be an effective solution in the real world, the study says.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok
Related
Related
