FrostedFlake
Posts: 3084
Joined: 3/4/2009
From: Centralia, Washington
Status: offline
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Now and again, you have opportunity to take a look under the hood.
Anopheles Mosquitoes are those that can transmit Malaria. An means No. Opheles means Profit. The Mosquito is named No Profit. It isn't a species, it's a genus of 460 species. 100 species can carry human malaria and 30-40 usually do. Their range is quite broad. And while most First World countries do not currently have a malaria problem, that is temporary.
Or maybe not.
Some bright folks have been up to some stuff I think interesting enough to warrant a close look.
Put simply, another genus of mosquito was noted to benefit from infection with a certain bacteria. The benefit was to turn up the insects immune system. It was noted the genes affected related to malaria, though the species was not affected by malaria. So they tried infecting malarial mosquitoes to see what would happen. Based on data from other research they expect to see :
1/ The insects life span reduced.
This is important because malaria has a 9 day incubation period before an infected bug can pass it on. If it dies before then, no problem. If it dies soon after, less problem. In either case, the lack of old mosquitoes means the percentage of them that might pose a threat is much smaller.
2/ The malarial plasmoid less successful.
The insects' immune system should reduce the intensity of malaria organisms by about 3/4. Coupled with the early demise of Wolbachia pipientis infected mosquitoes, the reduction of plasmoid intensity should restrict malaria transmission to about 5% of what it would be without the bacterial infection.
3/ The Wolbachia bactirium passed on to the eggs.
This is the tough one. The Anopheles is not all that suseptable to Wolbachia. The plan is to breed them in the lab until they are. Then, the infection will be made into a ' stable transinfection'. It will pass from female to egg. Then, they plan to breed billions of the suseptable, infected mosquito and release them to mix with wild populations. The trick is, what Wolbachia does to reproduction success.
Infected males and females produce infected eggs.
Uninfected males and infected females produce infected eggs.
Uninfected males and uninfected females produce Uninfected eggs.
Infected males and Uninfected females produce no eggs.
Reproductive advantage goes to the infected mosquito, 2:1. This is without counting the wild females mated to lab males, which are removed from the gene pool by their failed eggs. It is really 3:1. The transgenic infection should be very successful. This should reduce the threat of malaria by 95%. For ever.
The take home point is probably, aren't you glad we don't do war this way? And don't you sorta want to look around to see if anyone else does?
_____________________________
Frosted Flake
simul justus et peccator
Einen Liebhaber, und halten Sie die Schraube
"... evil (and hilarious) !!" Hlen5
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A biology lesson. - 
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