Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Every opportunity to defeat "Aedes aegypti" needs to developed.

There can be no restrictions on funding. The current remedies needs to go forward while other methods are in the laboratory.

March 30, 2016
By Amy Harmon
 
With the Zika virus (click here) spreading largely unchecked in Latin America and the Caribbean by way of a now-notorious insect, some of the nation’s leading mosquito researchers are striving to assemble a state-of-the-art DNA map that they say will help them fight the disease with the mosquito’s own genetic code.
The quest involves scientists from assorted disciplines who rarely collaborate, often compete for funding and have different ideas about how to genetically manipulate the mosquito, Aedes aegypti.
Some want to hunt for genes that, if altered in mosquitoes released into the wild, could drive the species to extinction. Others are trying to identify genes that control how mosquitoes sense human prey so as to devise better repellents. Still others favor the idea of selectively breeding populations of mosquitoes, like corn or cattle, for desirable — or, at least, less undesirable — traits, such as a preference for biting animals other than humans....

Understand the opportunity for mutation to defeat insecticide. There is no evidence of resistance to insecticide, but, the opportunity exists with most any insect. The best example is the American Cockroach. 

Then realize while these insects have a small lifespan the numbers are growing. A single female mosquito produces large numbers of offspring.

The race to defeat the most fatal mosquito is on. We cannot fail anyone. The funding is not astronomical. 

A woman in Tanzania under a mosquito tent with a relative who was being treated for malaria. With gene drives, it may be possible to kill off a mosquito population or make the population resistant to malaria parasites. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times

Biologists in the United States and Europe (click here) are developing a revolutionary genetic technique that promises to provide an unprecedented degree of control over insect-borne diseases and crop pests.
The technique involves a mechanism called a gene drive system, which propels a gene of choice throughout a population. No gene drives have yet been tested in the wild, but in laboratory organisms like the fruit fly, they have converted almost the entire population to carry the favored version of a gene.
Gene drives “could potentially prevent the spread of disease, support agriculture by reversing pesticide and herbicide resistance in insects and weeds, and control damaging invasive species,” a group of Harvard biologists wrote last year in the journal eLIFE.
A much discussed application of gene drives would help rid the world of pest-borne diseases like malaria, dengue fever and Lyme disease....

We need to get on with this. The crop issue is a far different discussion. The funding needs to go to mosquito research. Time is a wasting.

The resolve to destroy this species has to be complete. This mutation is a complete surprise and lends itself to human research of the disease as a weapon carrying insect. If this insect continues to exist on Earth, it's ability to develop a new attack on genetics is possible. If the virus did it once, it will do it again. 

There is the question of where is the 'virus acquired' by this species of mosquito. The Aedes aegypti is not hatched with the virus residing on it or in it. There is a source of infection

The destruction of the virus has to be complete. The opportunity of this virus has to be eliminated. It is the virus that is the enemy. The mosquito is a vector. If destroying the vector eliminates the virus, then  so be it.

Ecosystems are extremely important to respect, but, there is at least one researcher that states the mosquito can go.

21 July 2010
By Janet Fang

Every day, Jittawadee Murphy (click here) unlocks a hot, padlocked room at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, to a swarm of malaria-carrying mosquitoes (Anopheles stephensi). She gives millions of larvae a diet of ground-up fish food, and offers the gravid females blood to suck from the bellies of unconscious mice — they drain 24 of the rodents a month. Murphy has been studying mosquitoes for 20 years, working on ways to limit the spread of the parasites they carry. Still, she says, she would rather they were wiped off the Earth.
That sentiment is widely shared. Malaria infects some 247 million people worldwide each year, and kills nearly one million....

...Arctic pests

Elimination of mosquitoes might make the biggest ecological difference in the Arctic tundra, home to mosquito species including Aedes impiger and Aedes nigripes. Eggs laid by the insects hatch the next year after the snow melts, and development to adults takes only 3–4 weeks. From northern Canada to Russia, there is a brief period in which they are extraordinarily abundant, in some areas forming thick clouds. "That's an exceptionally rare situation worldwide," says entomologist Daniel Strickman, programme leader for medical and urban entomology at the US Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland. "There is no other place in the world where they are that much biomass."...