Apparently, one way to control the spread of malaria (which, incidentally, kills more than a million people each year, most of them children) is to cull the population of mosquitoes. And one way to do that is to flood a malaria-infested area with millions of sterile male mosquitoes. Males don't bite people, so they don't spread the disease. And females mate only once in their two-week life, so they can't pass malaria on if they mate with sterilised males.
There is, however, one problem with the plan: the mosquitoes released must all be males, because even sterilised females can transmit malaria. And telling male mosquito larvae from female ones isn't easy.
Enter the glowing gonads. This week, researchers at London's Imperial College announced that they have genetically modified mosquitoes by attaching a gene for florescence found in jellyfish to a gene expressed in mosquito testicles. In effect, they've made males' gonads glow so they can sort sterilised males from females and save human lives. Hopefully, female mosquitoes will find glowing gonads attractive.
(Extract from "This Week's Discoveries" in Knowledge News)
Now this is all well and good, but does this mean that not only will we be kept awake with that hideously incessant buzzing noise, we'll also have to put up some crazy mosquito-nuts disco party in the dead of the night? Anyone who's spent the night at my place will understand what a potential mind fuck this could be.....
Close up of a Coquillettidia Perturbans.
If you look close enough, you can see his fluoro nads..... though if you do, you really are a sick fucker.
No comments:
Post a Comment