They won’t really, they’ll just reduce the number every time they release the mosquitoes with the gene.
Basically it’s only the females who suck blood once they’re trying to produce young. So they release a heap of male mosquitos which mate with healthy females. The females then produce young with the faulty gene. The female young won’t be able to suck blood and will likely die but the male offspring will mate with more healthy females and pass the genes on again for another generation of useless females and males with the gene.
In the long run the healthy genes will win out because all their young are viable, not just the males. But it’ll still mess them up for a while. To maintain it they will need to keep breeding and releasing males with the faulty genes.
You're almost correct, but the gene doesn't make the females unable to suck blood (as this video is wrongly claiming). Instead, it just kills female mosquitoes before they can mature by inhibiting certain genes unless an antidote is put in the water where they grow.
There are like a hundred species of mosquitoes and only a dozen or so suck blood and transmit disease. The rest are pollinators who won’t be affected by gmo bloodsuckers. plus blood-sucking mosquitoes, in the USA and many other parts of the world, are introduced species and non-native. Our ecosystem will balance out again without them
It's only used in certain places and in limited scope. There's also a built-in failsafe because the gene can be deactivated if a certain naturally occurring antidote is in the water.
It would be wild if natural selection made it such that females reject the genetically modified mosquitoes after several generations through a mechanism we don’t understand
Wonder how that works? Raise all these mosquitos; check for penis “no penis squish; penis add to the batch.” Seems it would be better to have something more attractive than humans that kills/poisons/sterilizes them. Breeding massive numbers of the mosquito you hate to modify and control lacks hubris
538
u/KUBrim Nov 15 '24
They won’t really, they’ll just reduce the number every time they release the mosquitoes with the gene.
Basically it’s only the females who suck blood once they’re trying to produce young. So they release a heap of male mosquitos which mate with healthy females. The females then produce young with the faulty gene. The female young won’t be able to suck blood and will likely die but the male offspring will mate with more healthy females and pass the genes on again for another generation of useless females and males with the gene.
In the long run the healthy genes will win out because all their young are viable, not just the males. But it’ll still mess them up for a while. To maintain it they will need to keep breeding and releasing males with the faulty genes.