Genetically modified mosquitoes breed in Brazil

The linked article (edit: it has been changed) is rather confusing so I&#x27;d like to highlight the fact that the underlying study[1] hints at two very specific observations:<p>1) The effectiveness started to decrease after 18 months: the population of <i>Ae. aegypti</i> progressively returned back to its normal levels—and this despite the continued release every week of 450 thousand males of the modified strain.<p>2) Some hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature. Even though it was thought previously that they would be too weak to reproduce and thus not pass the modified genes to their offspring.<p>The first observation is concerning because this means that this technique might only work in the short-term. This is probably not a silver bullet to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases.<p>The second observation is probably much more worrying because it hints at unwanted side effects. We don&#x27;t know yet the exact consequences of having these hybrid strains roaming free in nature. The most likely explanation however is that since they are weaker, they&#x27;ll be progressively selected out and disappear.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41598-019-49660-6.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41598-019-49660-6.pdf</a>

« However, it was already known from previous laboratory experiments that a small proportion of about three to four percent of OX513A descendants can reach adulthood; the scientists had assumed that those would be too weak to reproduce. »<p>Ugh! This release should never have passed review.

How wrong am I to draw the conclusion from this, that people claiming that GMOs are &quot;completely safe&quot; (i.e. cannot have unexpected side effects, such as creation of super-species that completely crowds out other, non-GMO and now inferior, species in the specific niche, or the migration&#x2F;expression of toxin-producing genes in unexpected places) are full of bullshit?<p>That&#x27;s my knee-jerk conclusion, I&#x27;d be really interested in hearing counterarguments.

Enough people said this was a bad idea to expect this outcome.

I keep hearing that mosquitoes are not ecologically important, and their extinction would have little to no ecological effect.<p>However one indirect ecological consequence if something like this worked would be the migration of mammals to regions previously largely uninhabitable due to mosquitoes. Would such a migration and&#x2F;or population increase have some ecological effect? I don&#x27;t think anyone has explored this potential outcome thoroughly.

At a macro level, one would expect that the &#x27;baseline&#x27; mosquito population represents an equilibrium level due to competing factors within in the local environment.<p>While it seems very clear that releasing the GM mosquitos would never permanently alter this equilibrium, it&#x27;s not obvious to me (not a biologist) that it would even work with continuing release of the GM mosquitos. It seems to assume that the limiting factor on population is the number of offspring. If the limiting factor were competition for food or some other resource it seems like other mosquitos would fill in to replace the GM ones who died early.

Despite this failure, I still think the species should be targeted for extinction. What are our options?

Life finds a way, and more so when populations are huge and genomes are diverse. Not exactly a surprising result.<p>Maybe with another ten or twenty years of experience and technique in genome sequencing and interpretation we will be able to engineer a reliable gene drive.

I really didn&#x27;t get this idea when it was first proposed, and I still don&#x27;t. I&#x27;m about as far from an expert as you can get, but it seems to me that if you modify the genes of a wild population such that they produce less viable offspring you&#x27;ve just reduced their evolutionary fitness. That would leave a gap to be exploited by the members of the species whose genes you did not modify. On the surface anyway it seems like that might be what happened here.

When will we stop pretending like silver bullet solutions exist and that we can tamper with natural systems like this without introducing impactful unintended consequences?<p>We&#x27;ve repeatedly observed that what happens in the lab has little to do with what happens in nature, yet we ignore this lesson routinely and dangerously.<p>Does science have a learning disorder? Could it be, in part, a lack of humility?

Discussion from year ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18083755" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18083755</a> and half a year ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19224865" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19224865</a>

This is the biggest problem with gene modification. In regards to food and animals. If the experiment or area the modification is used is not very very carefully controlled the risk of spread globally in a closed planetary ecosystem is very high. You therefore have insane risk of introducing the modification to the entire population.

Radiolab did an episode on this effort a while back: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wnycstudios.org&#x2F;story&#x2F;kill-em-all" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wnycstudios.org&#x2F;story&#x2F;kill-em-all</a>

For me this is an indication that such modified organisms should have independent fail-safes.<p>Overall I think the modified genes will be extinguished rather than fixate, as most low-frequency alleles do.

How are these mosquitoes being bred&#x2F;modified?<p>As I understand it, current gene editing is less scalpel and more hammer. Is there therefore a risk of more mutations?

Life, uh, finds a way<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=dMjQ3hA9mEA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=dMjQ3hA9mEA</a>

I&#x27;m really disappointed in some of these comments. They&#x27;re borderline anti-science.

Maybe we should pay Jeff Goldblum to stop doing movies and just visit research departments in character.

need some DRM in there so those pirate wild mosquitoes can&#x27;t misuse our proprietary genes

Is this part of the debug.com project? Or something else?

Original article also had a phishing virus attached...

Haven’t they seen the movie Mimic?! <i>Shudders</i>

I like this word &quot;experminet.&quot;

Hope scientists had a plan B and plan C in place.

Instead of this editorialized garbage, why not link directly to the paper?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41598-019-49660-6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41598-019-49660-6</a><p>Or at least to better newscopy<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;genetically-modified-mosquitoes-breed-in-brazil&#x2F;a-50414340" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;genetically-modified-mosquitoes-breed-...</a>

The title is very misleading. &quot;Strengthened&quot; had nothing to do with the genetically modified genes. They released non-local mosquitoes that had been genetically modified, and because those mosquitoes bred with local mosquitoes (same species, just from a different location), the local mosquitoes now have a wider gene pool.<p>The wider gene pool is what the article is referring to as being &quot;strengthened&quot;, not any observable difference.

This page has some malicious ads on it that keep redirecting me to phishing sites (only on mobile Firefox apparently)

Danger to humanity

i accidentally the mosquito.

If at first you don&#x27;t succeed, you might want to watch Jurassic Park again