New Way to Reduce Diseases Spreading Through Mosquitos

Scientists identified a more targeted approach by mutating a gene in mosquitoes that specifically caused male sterility without impacting the insects’ health.

Using a gene editing tool known as CRISPR-Cas9 that targets specific genes tied to fertility in male mosquitoes, we can slow the spread of potentially deadly diseases such as Zika, dengue fever and yellow fever.

This genome editing tool is creating a buzz in the science world, as it is faster, cheaper and more accurate than previous techniques of editing DNA and has a wide range of potential applications.

About Mosquito Diseases
Mosquito-borne diseases, like malaria, filaria, dengue, etc are common in places conducive of mosquito breeding. Swamps, ponds and stagnated drainage provide optimal breeding ground for mosquitoes.

‘Gene editing can make mosquitos infertile to reduce the spread of diseases.’

Researchers at the Army’s Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies and the University of California Santa Barbara experimented with the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, found in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions throughout the world.

The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, discerned how a mutation can suppress the fertility of female mosquitoes.

“This is yet one more important and exciting example of how synthetic biology tools are demonstrating unparalleled utility,” said Dr. James Burgess, ICB program manager for the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, now known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory.

Vector-Borne Diseases | Insect-Borne Diseases | Bug-Borne Diseases
Vector-borne diseases are infectious diseases or illness transmitted through insects such as mosquitoes, sandflies, ticks, and bugs. Vectors can be either biological carriers or mechanical carriers.

To manage populations, scientists use a vector-control practice called the sterile insect technique in which they raise a lot of sterile male insects and they then release these males in numbers that overwhelm their wild counterparts.

Females that mate with sterile males before finding a fertile one are themselves rendered infertile, thereby decreasing the size of the next generation.

Natural Killers Fungi to be Genetically Engineered to Combat Malaria
Fungi that naturally infect mosquitoes can be made more deadly to control and kill these insects. The fungus can be engineered to produce multiple toxins.

Repeating this technique several times has the potential to crash the population because each generation is smaller than the last; releasing a similar number of sterile males has a stronger effect over time.

Though chemicals or radiation to sterilize male Aedes aegypti were used, they impacted the mosquitos’ health to an extent that they were less successful in mating with females, which undercuts the effectiveness of the sterile insect technique.

New Chemical Treatment for Bed Nets Developed
Distributing millions of treated nets to households across Uganda, far fewer children showed evidence of malaria parasites after sleeping under nets newly formulated to disarm a mosquito's key resistance mechanisms.

Using gene editing in male Aedes aegypti, researchers found that the mutant male mosquitos produced no sperm, and unlike in previous efforts, the sterile studs were otherwise completely healthy.

However, they were not sure whether albeit defective sperm from the sterile males, was needed to render female mosquitoes infertile, or whether the transfer of seminal fluid was all it took.

To determine how timing played into this effect. They exposed the females to mutant males for different lengths of time.

They noticed little difference after 30 minutes, but female fertility quickly dropped after that. Females copulated twice on average, even during the first 10 minutes. This indicated that females have to mate with many sterile males before being rendered infertile themselves.

Aedes aegypti populations could easily bounce back from an 80% drop in fertility. The success of the sterile insect technique comes from subsequent, successive releases of sterile males.

Each release will be more effective than the last as sterile males account for an ever-growing proportion of the population. Researchers also plan to continue investigating mosquito mating behaviors and fertility.

They are devising a way to maintain stocks of males so they are only sterile in the wild and not in the lab. In addition, they are characterizing male mating behavior to uncover new ways to suppress mosquito populations.

Source-Medindia