In the largest field trial in the history of the U.S, Verily, the life sciences arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has released the first batch of sterilised male mosquitoes in Fresno County, California.
Earlier this month, Oxitec, a british biotech gained approval to introduce its GM mosquitoes in Brazil, the US, Panama, and India to combat mosquito borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika.
Now, Verily has created a robot that raises about one million mosquitoes every week in an automated lab, capable of producing infertile male insects treated with naturally occurring Wolbachia bacteria, and has used its custom-built machines and algorithms to increase its production of mosquitos.
The initiative, called the Debug Project announced in October last year, makes use of an automated sex-sorting procedure to ensure that only males are released as they do not bite humans, and when they mate with females in the wild, the eggs cannot develop or hatch- thereby suppressing the proliferation of mosquitoes and ultimately cutting down on the mosquito-borne diseases.
The mosquitoes that the company is developing aren’t genetically engineered. Rather, they’re bred to be infected with Wolbachia, a type of naturally occurring bacteria that infects many types of insects, which essentially sterilizes
them.To help breed and release the mosquitoes, Verily has partnered with Kentucky-based Mosquito Mate and Fresno’s mosquito control agency, the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District.
Linus Upson, a senior engineer at Verily, says the purpose of the study is to see if the approach succeeds at reducing the population of mosquitoes in the area where the bacteria-treated insects are released. He says Verily’s automated approach could help lower costs for communities wanting to control mosquitoes this way.
Verily’s effort represents a growing interest by industry and nonprofit organizations in using altered insects to stop the transmission of deadly diseases and protect crops from agricultural pests.
