“Chinese scientists are using a genetically modified fungus to create highly effective mosquito traps. The engineered Metarhizium constantly releases a scent that draws mosquitoes into fungus-laced traps, where the spores infect and kill them. In lab tests, these traps killed 90 to 100 percent of mosquitoes. The researchers hope their fungus could offer a cheap, scalable alternative to chemical insecticides,” reports The Doomslayer.
The New York Times explains:
Watch your back, DEET. There’s a new form of mosquito control in town — one that involves olfactory trickery, genetic engineering and a deadly infectious fungus.
Researchers reported last week in the journal Nature Microbiology that Metarhizium — a fungus already used to control pests — can be genetically engineered to produce so much of a sweet-smelling substance that it is virtually irresistible to mosquitoes. When they laced traps with those fungi, 90 percent to 100 percent of mosquitoes were killed in lab experiments. The scientists say this may provide an affordable, scalable and more ecologically friendly way to quell the bloodsucking insects….
Mosquitoes are by some measures the most deadly animals on Earth. They spread malaria, dengue and other diseases, which collectively infect up to 700 million people and kill one million each year.
Public health professionals fumigate communities and manufacture pesticide-laced bed nets to cull mosquito numbers. But many insect populations have evolved resistance to chemical interventions.
Emerging techniques counter the pests through clever biology — for example, preventing disease growth by infecting the insects with Wolbachia bacteria, or sterilizing them with radiation.
The military dictator of an African country has ordered the Gates Foundation to stop releasing genetically-modified mosquitoes to fight malaria.
Releasing mosquitoes is something scientists have successfully done in other countries to fight malaria. “Conservationists are releasing Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in Hawaii to control the spread of avian malaria, which has devastated local bird populations,” reported The Doomslayer. “A group of environmental organizations have been dropping biodegradable containers of mosquitoes into honeycreeper habitats on Maui and Kauai from helicopters….The containers fall to the ground without a top, and when they land the insects escape into the forest. Critically, these are not your typical mosquitoes. They’re all males, which don’t bite, that have been reared in a lab. More importantly, they contain a strain of bacteria called wolbachia that interferes with reproduction: When those males mate with females in the area, their eggs fail to hatch.”
Brazil has released millions of bacteria-infested mosquitos to fight another tropic disease, dengue fever. Such bacteria-infested mosquitoes cut dengue fever by 69%, and large reductions in chikungunya and Zika, two other mosquito-borne diseases.
Such mosquitoes, infested with Wolbachia bacteria, have also been bred to fight dengue fever in Honduras, in hopes of replacing mosquitoes that spread dengue fever, with a strain of mosquitoes that doesn’t spread the disease.
