On a still night, as the air is thick with silence, the sharp, whining buzz of a mosquito shatters the calm. These blood-sucking insects that disturb people’s deep slumber are also responsible for spreading diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, malaria and Zika fever, which affect millions of people each year worldwide.
Given the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, combined with the emergence of mosquitoes resistant to pesticides, scientists are looking for alternative environment-friendly approaches for pest management.
Now, researchers have developed a new population control method where male insects carrying toxic proteins can poison disease-spreading females during mating. The results, published in Nature Communications, describe a genetic biocontrol method that offers a fast and effective solution to managing pests.
Such approaches are not entirely new. In the 1950s, when researchers mated female insects with radiologically sterilized males, they did not produce offsprings, reducing the next generation’s population. More recently, scientists propagated transgenes in insects that lower the fitness of future generations, resulting in decreased insect population. Although such methods are promising, they require at least one generation to take effect: Female insects may not produce offsprings, but they can continue transmitting infections.
“As we’ve learned from COVID-19, reducing the spread of these diseases as quickly as possible is important to prevent epidemics,” said study author Samuel Beach, a graduate student in biologist Maciej Maselko’s lab at Macquarie University, in a press release.
By Sneha Khedkar
Article can be accessed on: The Scientist