November 24, 2015

"US scientists say they have bred a genetically modified (GM) mosquito that can resist malaria infection."

"If the lab technique works in the field, it could offer a new way of stopping the biting insects from spreading malaria to humans, they say. The scientists put a new 'resistance' gene into the mosquito's own DNA, using a gene editing method called Crispr."

BBC reports. And here's a long, interesting New Yorker story with a lot about Crisper:
“I had never heard that word,” Zhang told me recently as we sat in his office, which looks out across the Charles River and Beacon Hill. Zhang has a perfectly round face, its shape accentuated by rectangular wire-rimmed glasses and a bowl cut. 
The New Yorker always tells you — in a few words — what a person looks like, even when it doesn't matter in the slightest.  Zhang is Feng Zhang, "the youngest member of the core faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T."
“So I went to Google just to see what was there,” he said. Zhang read every paper he could; five years later, he still seemed surprised by what he found. CRISPR, he learned, was a strange cluster of DNA sequences that could recognize invading viruses, deploy a special enzyme to chop them into pieces, and use the viral shards that remained to form a rudimentary immune system. The sequences, identical strings of nucleotides that could be read the same way backward and forward, looked like Morse code, a series of dashes punctuated by an occasional dot. The system had an awkward name—clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats—but a memorable acronym.

CRISPR has two components. The first is essentially a cellular scalpel that cuts DNA. The other consists of RNA, the molecule most often used to transmit biological information throughout the genome. It serves as a guide, leading the scalpel on a search past thousands of genes until it finds and fixes itself to the precise string of nucleotides it needs to cut. It has been clear at least since Louis Pasteur did some of his earliest experiments into the germ theory of disease, in the nineteenth century, that the immune systems of humans and other vertebrates are capable of adapting to new threats. But few scientists had considered the possibility that single bacterial cells could defend themselves in the same way. The day after Zhang heard about CRISPR, he flew to Florida for a genetics conference. Rather than attend the meetings, however, he stayed in his hotel room and kept Googling. “I just sat there reading every paper on CRISPR I could find,” he said. “The more I read, the harder it was to contain my excitement.”

15 comments:

Bob Ellison said...

Anti-GM jerks will kill this deal, just as Rachel Carson killed DDT.

Bob Ellison said...

Toxic colonialism. This is the level of stupidity we're dealing with. Very high.

Curious George said...

Yeah, but then in Jurassic Park 17 they will have dinosaurs that can't get malaria and we all all screwed.

John Henry said...

This is tremendously good news if true.

Malaria is, by far, the biggest killer in the world. Get rid of mosquitoes and get rid of it.

Approximately half of all people who have ever died, have died from malaria. I used to think this was hyperbole, and it still may be to some extent.

However, I read a book on malaria that repeated this and then showed the numbers behind the assertion. It is not an unreasonable estimate.

Half of everyone who has ever lived. That is one hell of a lot of people.

I would also give a shout out to Bill and Melinda Gates. 10 years ago when they announced they were going to find a way to stop malaria, most knowledgeable people in the field scoffed at them. They have made some stunning progress.

And a big FU to the people who banned DDT.

John Henry

MadisonMan said...

Does resistance to malaria mean those mosquitoes are at an advantage to mosquitoes that aren't resistant? Or does Man have to create, continuously, resistant mosquitoes?

MikeR said...

It would have been interesting if they explained a little more: how do you replace the bad mosquitos with the good mosquitos? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia#Elimination_programs

Scott M said...

What could possibly go wrong?

tim maguire said...

I heard of CRISPR for the first time just a few weeks ago, now I'm hearing it almost every day. As a technology, it sounds like it's up there with nano engineering and 3-D printing. Incredible potential in many areas.

Sebastian said...

A bad case of cultural appropriation. Make him stop.

Scott said...

So if malaria is eliminated, the developmental advantage of those with the recessive gene for sickle cell anemia would also be eliminated; and that gene-linked disease would also disappear in a few hundred years. Right?

Or will the knock-on effects of eliminating malaria in this specific manner end up killing us all? Ecological disasters were created in the past by presumably smart people unleashing new species into ecosystems. Are we all that much smarter than they are?

Scott said...

Crispr, Grindr, whatevr.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Scott said...

Crispr, Grindr, whatevr.

One is useful for eradicating diseases, the other for spreading them.

mikee said...

Silent Spring and Rachel Carson have killed more people than Genghis Khan's armies, by stopping the ecologically safe use of DDT to eradicate mosquitoes in malarial countries.

So thanks for that, environmentalists!

I expect a raucous refusal to allow genetically modified mosquitoes to be released to fight malaria, from these same environmental advocates.

Apparently the only environmentally correct thing humans can do is die off. In which case, I plan to be wrong for as long as possible.

cubanbob said...

Scott said...
So if malaria is eliminated, the developmental advantage of those with the recessive gene for sickle cell anemia would also be eliminated; and that gene-linked disease would also disappear in a few hundred years. Right?

Or will the knock-on effects of eliminating malaria in this specific manner end up killing us all? Ecological disasters were created in the past by presumably smart people unleashing new species into ecosystems. Are we all that much smarter than they are?

11/24/15, 10:57 AM"

Smallpox has been eradicated and so far there hasn't been any terrible consequences.

If this neat trick works with mosquitoes and malaria, what other mosquito born diseases than this be made to work on and can this also be applied to other insects such as fleas and flies and their transmitted diseases?

David said...

However it is the first mosquito able to spread HIV.