Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

U.S. approves plans to release weaponized mosquitoes — for your own good

Luke Dormehl
By

mosquitoes released epa 42189902 l
Mycteria/123RF
You know those Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus-type movies where the government decides to solve the problem of one rampaging animal by releasing another into the wild to fight it? Well, that pretty much just happened — except that this time the newly released creatures are genetically-engineered killer mosquitoes.

Announced this week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officially signed off on an unorthodox plan to use lab-grown mosquitoes, developed by the Kentucky-based biotech company MosquitoMate, as insect assassins to hunt down disease-carrying wild mosquitoes. It’s part of a project called “Adam,” in which male mosquitoes (the ones that don’t bite, since male mosquitoes feed only on flower nectar) are used as vehicles to deliver a potent mosquito insecticide, thereby reducing mosquito populations.

Recommended Videos

“MosquitoMate has developed a novel mosquito control tool for the Asian Tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, which we call ZAP,” Corey Brelsfoard, team leader for the Adam project, told Digital Trends. “ZAP mosquitoes are a non-biting, male Aedes albopictus mosquitoes that carry a bacterium named Wolbachia. Wolbachia is common throughout insects worldwide, with scientists estimating that over half of all insects naturally carry the infection. When ZAP males are released and mate with naturally occurring Asian Tiger mosquito females, the resulting eggs do not hatch, decreasing the number of the biting mosquito population and potentially impacting disease transmission.”

Related

MosquitoMate’s early laboratory experimental work started as early as 2004 at the University of Kentucky. The company was then spun off in 2010 and has taken an additional seven years to gain its current EPA approved status. The lab-grown mosquitoes will first be deployed close to home in Lexington, Kentucky, although the EPA has given the greenlight for a total of 20 states — provided that the company registers with each individual state prior to releasing its buzzing cargo.

“MosquitoMate has performed field trials using the ZAP technology in Kentucky, California, and New York,” Brelsfoard said. “MosquitoMate has also performed field trials using similar technology targeting the Yellow Fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, in California and Florida.”

Now we just need to wait and see if it can showcase the same levels of success on the big stage.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Luke Dormehl
Luke Dormehl
Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Watch NASA’s U.S. weather satellite rocket launch highlights
watch highlights of rocket launch us weather satellite noaa

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) new weather satellite successfully launched from NASA's Cape Canaveral facility in Florida at 4:38 p.m. ET (1:38 p.m. PT) on Tuesday, March 1.

Watch NOAA's GOES-T Weather Satellite Launch to Geostationary Orbit

Read more
Rocket Lab selects U.S. site to launch, land next-gen rocket
Rocket Lab's Neutron rocket.

Rocket Lab highlighted its growing ambitions as a spaceflight company this week when it announced NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia as the launch site for upcoming missions that will use its next-generation Neutron rocket.

Rocket Lab said it will also build Neutron at Wallops and use the location to prepare and conduct Neutron missions.

Read more
These Black pioneers were pillars of the U.S space program
Bolden on the flight deck of Discovery during STS-60.

When you think about America’s space program, your mind probably jumps to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon, the space race between America and the USSR, or perhaps some of the agency's famous crafts like the space shuttle or the Hubble Space Telescope. But behind all those iconic moments, memories, and machines is NASA’s unique place in America’s racial struggle.

Over the course of its history, NASA has both participated in racial discrimination and contributed to the fight against it. Like many other places in America, the agency that later became NASA, called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), participated in racial segregation. That ended when it became NASA in 1958, but the underlying racial issues of its past echoed for years to come.

Read more