Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

750M genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 159 posts

Re: 750M genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida

#32

Post by mosquitoh8 »

strogonoff wrote: post #16

From what I recall, previous experiment elsewhere (Brazil?) showed that modified mosquitoes in fact transfer genes to native population, counter to assumptions. Was that sorted out or deemed not that big of a deal?

Unknown implications of the hybrid vigor and inadequate monitoring is still going on. We frankly do not know. We need to ask certain British companies working with the local governments in places where they tested OX513A. The last study implicates a 3% survival rate. At first the females discriminated against males with OX513A but the population quickly rebounded with a third hybrid that appears to be more "vigor" as the study indicated. Implications of this new hybrid is unknown.

Re: 750M genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida

#34

Post by mosquitoh8 »

GloriousKoji wrote: post #7

Didn't they already try this somewhere else and it wasn't very effective?

Here's the study:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6

This study is interesting. It relates to the company and what happened to the mosquitoes when they tested it in Brazil, Cayman Islands and Malaysia.

TLDR: Mosquito population became suppressed at first but rebounded to pre-release levels and some carried the genetics of the GM mosquitoes (3% survival rate and can reproduce), unknown implications of hybrid vigor.

"However, it is clear from the data in Garziera et al.6 that the effectiveness of the release program began to break down after about 18 months, i.e., the population which had been greatly suppressed rebounded to nearly pre-release levels. This has been speculated to have been due to mating discrimination against OX513A males, a phenomenon known to occur in sterile male release programs

The release strain, OX513A, was derived from a laboratory strain originally from Cuba, then outcrossed to a Mexican population7. The three populations forming the tri-hybrid population now in Jacobina (Cuba/Mexico/Brazil) are genetically quite distinct (Extended Data Fig. E2), very likely resulting in a more robust population than the pre-release population due to hybrid vigor.

These results demonstrate the importance of having in place a genetic monitoring program during releases of transgenic organisms to detect un-anticipated consequences."

Re: 750M genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida

#35

Post by zelienople »

RandallBrown wrote: post #8
supernova87a wrote: post #3

Does this even sound right numbers-wise? On Tuesday, officials in the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) gave final approval to release 750 million of the modified mosquitoes over a two-year period. That would mean approx. 1M mosquitoes per day by this organization. Who is cultivating (?) or growing 1M mosquitoes per day. Isn't that like a pickup truck bed cubed size of mosquitoes, every day? Or is it bei…

750 million mosquitos would only be about 8300 pounds. Logistically it does seem pretty difficult, but I know nothing about mosquito farming.

It's not the farming that's hard; it's the milking.
Post reply on HN