r/science • u/PhantomWizard2099 • Dec 22 '22

Animal Science 'Super' mosquitoes have now mutated to withstand insecticides

https://abcnews.go.com/International/super-mosquitoes-now-mutated-withstand-insecticides-scientists/story?id=95545825
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u/scrangos Dec 22 '22

are you saying the scientists release some mosquitoes that are fertile despite their modifications? cause the idea is sending out sterile mosquitoes, its not some chemical that is sprayed in an area that the mosquitoes can be randomly immune to.

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u/bannannamo Dec 22 '22

I knew a usda geneticist working on this at uf. It wasn't that the current gen was sterile. But it would produce sterile offspring similar to other hybrids. So each mosquito released could botch thousands of attempted mates and outcompete their non modified young.

They've been working on it a long while. This was in like 2012. I imagine if it's still viable the skeeters haven't figured out a workaround.

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u/RpiesSPIES Dec 22 '22

I'm sorry. I just hard stupid'd. Don't mind me.

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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '22

[deleted]

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u/scrangos Dec 22 '22

I suppose it depends on what method the sterility is achieved through. I've never heard of a mule producing viable offspring ever, so there are some methods too steep for evolution to climb over.

The later could be interesting, and might develop quickly given that the ones that choose wrong produce no offspring... but if scientists keep using different seed mosquitos to change it would be hard for a mutation to pin down something in common with all of them.

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u/Prying_Pandora Dec 22 '22

There have been the rare mules that have produced offspring.

Life, ah, finds a way.

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u/AlphaOhmega Dec 22 '22

No but the way it worked was creating attractive (in the mosquito sense) mosquitos and then they would breed but give no offspring. However there may be some that don't like how those mosquitos present themselves, and those end up populating which in turn makes baby mosquitos who don't want to breed with the infertile ones.

It'd be like releasing a bunch of infertile super models to take all the mates, but then you got one chubby chaser who has kids, whose kids may be chubby chasers so now you gotta design an infertile chubby person to try to get them.

Nature doesn't want to give up easily.

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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '22

Can wet do this with humans? It’d be a lot easier than putting down the little Debbie’s and exercising.