YosemiteSam
Unfriendly and Aloof!
- Messages
- 45,858
- Reaction score
- 22,194
PETI is gonna be pissed! :laugh2:
=========================================
War, plague, famine, heart disease, cigarettes, road trauma: six very effective killers of human beings. But they're all amateurs when their records are compared to the number one mass murderer of all time. The humble mosquito, and the deadly diseases it carries, is estimated to have been responsible for as many as 46 billion deaths over the history of our species. That staggering number is even more frightening in context - it means that mosquitoes are alleged to have killed more than half the humans that ever lived.
So if any creature has earned the full force of the wrath of humanity, this nasty little bugger is it. Especially certain species like Aedes aegypti mosquitoes - the world's number one disease vector for deadly dengue fever, which infects between 50 and 100 million people a year around the world.
<snip...continue>
American scientist Anthony James, from UC Irvine, has made mosquito genetics the focus of his career - and his latest invention is a genetically modified mosquito designed to bring populations of Aedes aegypti down from within.
In short, the modified genes affect only the female mosquitoes, rendering them flightless. The larvae hatch on the water, and the females are unable to leave, rendering them harmless to humans and leaving them to die. The males are unaffected, so they mature normally, then mate with other females to pass the genetic modification on.
It's an extremely effective way of triggering a mosquito population crash - James and his colleagues have proven in cage-based testing in Mexico that a sufficient number of genetically hacked males can completely decimate a mosquito population within a few months. The table below shows this genetic genocide in action - within 23 and 33 weeks, the genetically modified males managed to completely destroy the otherwise stable mosquito population in James' test cages.
Complete Story
=========================================
War, plague, famine, heart disease, cigarettes, road trauma: six very effective killers of human beings. But they're all amateurs when their records are compared to the number one mass murderer of all time. The humble mosquito, and the deadly diseases it carries, is estimated to have been responsible for as many as 46 billion deaths over the history of our species. That staggering number is even more frightening in context - it means that mosquitoes are alleged to have killed more than half the humans that ever lived.
So if any creature has earned the full force of the wrath of humanity, this nasty little bugger is it. Especially certain species like Aedes aegypti mosquitoes - the world's number one disease vector for deadly dengue fever, which infects between 50 and 100 million people a year around the world.
<snip...continue>
American scientist Anthony James, from UC Irvine, has made mosquito genetics the focus of his career - and his latest invention is a genetically modified mosquito designed to bring populations of Aedes aegypti down from within.
In short, the modified genes affect only the female mosquitoes, rendering them flightless. The larvae hatch on the water, and the females are unable to leave, rendering them harmless to humans and leaving them to die. The males are unaffected, so they mature normally, then mate with other females to pass the genetic modification on.
It's an extremely effective way of triggering a mosquito population crash - James and his colleagues have proven in cage-based testing in Mexico that a sufficient number of genetically hacked males can completely decimate a mosquito population within a few months. The table below shows this genetic genocide in action - within 23 and 33 weeks, the genetically modified males managed to completely destroy the otherwise stable mosquito population in James' test cages.
Complete Story
