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A synthetic sex ratio distortion system for the control of the human malaria mosquito

Researchers have discovered and tested a new technique to engender a heritable shutdown of male mosquitoes ability to sire female offspring. This could be a much more efficient and rapid way to engineer the extinction of mosquitoes since this trait can stably achieve fixation in any population. From the abstract:

Shredding of the paternal X chromosome prevents it from being transmitted to the next generation, resulting in fully fertile mosquito strains that produce >95% male offspring. We demonstrate that distorter male mosquitoes can efficiently suppress caged wild-type mosquito populations, providing the foundation for a new class of genetic vector control strategies.

Author Description

Louie Helm is a Machine Learning Engineer

5 Responses to “A synthetic sex ratio distortion system for the control of the human malaria mosquito”

  1. June 18

    Austin James Parish

    This is excellent. I wonder if groups in support of protecting Anopheles will pop up if we become really successful with this – as with the guinea worm: http://www.deadlysins.com/guineaworm/

  2. June 18

    Maxim Kesin

    Children of Men. For mosquitos

  3. June 18

    Kelly Hoverocerous MacNeill

    didn’t this happen in mass effect?

  4. June 18

    Alex Demarsh

    “Man, where are all the ladies? It’s a proboscis fest in here!”

  5. June 18

    Matt Netsch

    That was different Kelly Hoverocerous MacNeill. In mass effect, the genophage killed 99.9% of offspring, not made them all male. Also, they are targeting like 1 species if mosquito’s out of 3000 not the genocide of an entire sentient species.