Female mosquito targeted with venom to curb disease
Female mosquito targeted with venom to curb disease
Tags: Genetic biocontrol, Mosquito husbandry, Vector controlDann Okoth, Scidev.net, 2025.
A genetic biocontrol method which reduces the lifespan of female insects could work as fast as pesticides to reduce populations of disease-spreading mosquitoes and destructive crop pests, according to researchers. Insect pests pose a huge threat to global health and agriculture, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of infections, and costing billions in healthcare and crop damage each year. Biocontrol is increasingly seen as a viable alternative to pesticides, which can harm non-target species and ecosystems and are losing efficacy as resistance to them grows. A new approach called Toxic Male Technique (TMT), developed by researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology at Macquarie University, Australia, involves genetically engineering male insects to reduce the lifespan of the females they mate with. Researchers say it can be used to respond rapidly to outbreaks of agricultural pests as well as to fight mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue and Zika.
“We hold that our technology has the potential of working as fast as pesticides without the attendant risks of harming other species and the environment,” says Samuel Beach a researcher in applied biosciences at Macquarie University and lead author of the study, published today in Nature Communications. According to Beach, the approach is more efficient than existing methods such as the Sterile Insect Technique or the release of insects carrying lethal genes, which work by releasing masses of sterilized or genetically modified males to mate with wild females.
