By removing some of the light-sensing receptors, we create a variant that does not lose sight and cannot distinguish between light and dark.
Instead of eradicating mosquitoes, focus on controlling the population and preventing the transmission of various diseases
▲ Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries yellow fever, dengue fever and Zika virus (Getty Image Bank)
Mosquitoes that keep you awake at night in midsummer. Sleeping at night is also a problem, but infectious diseases carried by mosquitoes are also a problem. However, it is said that genetically engineered mosquitoes that cannot see humans have been created. Interest is focused on whether this will end the war on mosquitoes.
The New York Times reported on the 17th (local time) that a paper containing this information was published in the scientific journal Current Biology on the 30th of last month.
According to the paper, researchers at the University of California, USA created a mutant Aedes aegypti that does not recognize humans using the CRISPR gene scissors, a gene-editing tool.
Mosquitoes are listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as ‘the deadliest animal in the world’. Mosquitoes suck blood and carry germs and viruses that cause malaria. Accurate estimates are difficult, but each year tens of millions of people contract mosquito-borne diseases, and about one million of them die. Aedes aegypti, a type of Aedes mosquito, is mainly in Africa, the Americas and parts of Asia and transmits yellow fever, dengue fever, and Zika virus. Most of them are fatal diseases for which there is no vaccine.
Based on the results of past research that Aedes Aedes aegypti is more attracted to people wearing dark clothes, the research team confirmed that the mosquito could detect an attack target not only by detecting carbon dioxide and blood smell, but also by light and dark. The researchers also inferred that the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is active during the daytime, would be highly dependent on vision.
So, through gene editing, Aedes aegypti caused a mutation that lacks two of the five light-sensing proteins present in the eye. The result is said to have created a mosquito that cannot distinguish between light and dark without completely losing sight.
Exact experiments have not yet been conducted to determine whether mutant mosquitoes actually bite humans. However, this study is expected to be a clue to solving problems such as the transmission of infectious diseases without extinction of mosquitoes.
▲ Mosquito control is in progress in Brazil last November. (Newsis)
Various methods have been proposed and implemented to solve the mosquito problem. The classic method was pesticide spraying. However, it has been pointed out that the cumulative use of pesticides creates resistant mosquitoes and adversely affects other insects, destroying the environment. As a result, some methods have been devised to kill female mosquitoes by releasing genetically modified mosquitoes or to reduce the population by inducing ‘mosquito infertility’. However, problems such as the culling of genetically-modified mosquitoes have been frustrating.
Methods to significantly reduce the number of mosquitoes through genetic manipulation, etc., are also problematic. This is because there is concern that the beneficial role of mosquitoes, such as helping plants to reproduce, may be destroyed by affecting animals that feed on mosquitoes, disrupting the food chain and destroying the ecosystem.
In such a situation, the invisible strain of mosquitoes could be a solution to preventing transmission of diseases by preventing them from sucking human blood without significantly affecting the mosquito population.
Infengjan, a researcher at the University of California, who is the lead author of the paper, said, “The more we know how mosquitoes detect humans, the more environmentally friendly mosquitoes can be controlled.”
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