SRISPR Helps Erase Mosquitos Entirely By Altering Their Gene

No more Skeeters

So, what do you think is the most deadly animal? If you are thinking of an animal on the top of the food chain, or the one that we are frightened even to hear of, you could probably be wrong. There is a long list, including: bears, cheetah, snakes, alligators, sharks, tigers, bats, wolves. However, and also unfortunately, the top killer is the mosquito. An insect that we usually consider to be annoying, but quite often, not a life-threatening source.

Despite their tiny appearance, mosquitoes are the deadly serious killers who responsible for million deaths per year, with diseases they bring-dengue and malaria. Up to the moment, a new study has shown that we could eradicate these dangerous creatures with a genetic method called a gene drive- provided we are comfortable risking changing our ecosystem forever.

Scientists use a gene drive to alter an organism, which then inherited by offspring, similar to a time bomb set in the whole species. With this method, Imperial College London’s scientists had succeed in eradicating the whole caged Anopheles gambiae, the species responsible for malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.

Alter the gender

In the Nature Biotechnology journal’s Monday publication, the study shown has used CRISPR to alter the gene defining gender in 150 male mosquitoes. This change strengthen the male gene- the main goal was that the entire population would stop creating females, then leading them to extinction.

The scientists put these tested mosquitoes into a cage environment, together with 450 unaltered mosquitoes, both genders, to reproduce with. The system worked: the final female offsprings exhibited traits from both sexes, could not lay eggs or bite. Female mosquitoes totally disappeared after the 8th generation.

Into the wild

Researchers have never seen a gene drive erase an entire species like this.

However, it is only a part of the war that the technology can have effects on. Side effects are not yet to figure out until the experiment is actually made in the wild. Unluckily, it will not be likely to happen for another 5 to 10 years, according to Andrea Crisanti, the Imperial College study’s lead researcher.