Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. News

Florida will release gene-edited mosquitoes into the wild, despite outcry

Luke Dormehl
By
Dengue, mosquitos and the Oxitec approach - part 2

Hundreds of millions of genetically engineered mosquitoes will soon be purposely set loose in the Florida Keys in what those opposed to the venture are calling a “Jurassic Park experiment” in action.

Recommended Videos

The initiative, a first in U.S. history, aims to reduce mosquito-borne diseases by releasing lab-modified insects so they can mate with regular mosquitoes and produce nonviable offspring. This could eliminate the local population of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which are known to spread diseases.

Similar gene-editing techniques have been examined for a number of years, with various approaches being explored, from gene-edited insects that are unable to carry certain diseases like malaria to so-called “gene drives” that cause only males to be born, thereby killing off mosquito populations within a short space of time.

Related

If it works out as planned, the release of 750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes could be a game-changer for fighting diseases like Zika and dengue fever. The approved plan calls for field trials in which 750 million gene-edited mosquitoes will be released over a two-year period in Monroe County, starting in 2021. The five member board of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District made it decision by a 4-1 margin at an online meeting Tuesday. The trial will be carried out by biotech company Oxitec, which has been working on this specific problem since 2009.

Not everyone is happy about the plan being given the official go-ahead. There are numerous concerns that have been raised by scientists and members of the public, including that it might result in the creation of hybrid mosquitoes more resistant to insecticides.

“With all the urgent crises facing our nation and the state of Florida — the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, climate change — the administration has used tax dollars and government resources for a Jurassic Park experiment,” Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the International Center for Technology Assessment who also works with the Center for Food Safety, said in a statement. “Now the Monroe County Mosquito Control District has given the final permission needed. What could possibly go wrong? We don’t know, because [the Environmental Protection Agency] unlawfully refused to seriously analyze environmental risks. Now, without further review of the risks, the experiment can proceed.”

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…
Biologists create a mutant fly with 140-million-year-old genes
fly reconstructed genes 140 million years ago fruit flies

In what totally sounds like a mash-up of two of Jeff Goldblum’s best movies, The Fly and Jurassic Park, scientists at New York University and the University of Chicago have created mutant fruit flies carrying reconstructed genes from 140 million years ago. The goal? To shed some light on the process of evolution and how it has changed the development of fruit flies over millions of years.

The work, described in the journal eLife, was achieved using cutting-edge gene insertion techniques to replace a particular modern day protein with ancestral proteins in a living fly. The purpose was to test whether it could create functions which had long since been absent. The scientists discovered that two mutations millions of years ago altered the function of a developmental gene, which regulates development of the fruit fly’s head. This chance mutation has since become an indispensable aspect of modern fruit flies. Fly embryos without the modern day Bicoid protein die very early since they form tail structures at both ends of their body, rather than forming a head.

Read more
Editing mosquito DNA could help wipe out malaria and Zika — here’s how
app mosquito buzz 3

From creating malaria-resistant mosquitoes to building “photonic fences” able to shoot down the blood-sucking insects with deadly lasers, there are a whole lot of exciting, cutting-edge ways that science is trying to deal with the mosquito problem. Researchers from the United Kingdom's Imperial College London have developed a new, promising approach to add to the toolset: A “gene drive” which disseminates a genetic modification that stops female mosquitoes from reproducing.

“If this genetic modification can have the ability to incapacitate the female mosquito’s ability to reproduce it could be an incredibly powerful tool to suppress the mosquito population which transmits diseases, such as malaria, Zika, yellow fever, and so on,” Andrea Crisanti, professor of Molecular Parasitology at Imperial, told Digital Trends.

Read more
You’ll have to wait a long time for a Steam Deck 2
Steam Deck sitting on a pink background.

Just as we started getting excited at the prospect of a Steam Deck 2, it now seems that gamers will have to wait a lot longer for the handheld. According to a recent statement, Valve is not looking to release the new Steam Deck for at least a couple more years. Will the console be able to stay competitive against its rivals?

Pierre-Loup Griffais, the designer of Steam Deck and a rep for Valve, spoke to The Verge and revealed some information about the future of the gaming handheld. While the company has plans to upgrade, it's playing it safe and doesn't see that happening until late 2025 at the very least -- but it could be even longer than that.

Read more