Re: [DIYbio] Mosquito

A lot of fish I like to eat depend on engorged, female mosquitoes laying eggs in their ponds. There's not very many things that aren't plants that'll bring new food to small ponds, and it's even rarer for food to present as wiggling little protein and calorie dense things just below the surface of the water for minnows and catfish to easily eat. 

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 12:56 PM, Dennis Oleksyuk <mail@dennis-o.com> wrote:

To those who want to have a sensible discussion I strongly suggest to read the paper first.

http://elifesciences.org/content/early/2014/07/15/eLife.03401

The team who design the gene drive technology for mosquitos went to the great length to ensure specificity of the gene altering, make it persist over generation, and to have a way to pull a plug if it turns out to be a disaster. I haven't seen any popular science or even scientific overview that gave the fair treatment to all of it. What most of them describe is very primitive version of what actually was done.

On the other hand I found really interesting how Zika outbreak interplays with society believes. The last time I've checked there were only 6 confirmed cases where Zika virus was colocated with children who had birth defects. While thousands of other kids who were clearly born from mothers infected with Zika did not have any issues. It resembles what happened to autism and vaccinate. It is much easier to blame an external factor than accept that shit just happens because of random mutations. What's amusing that in the case of Zika it can cause the society not only embrace the vaccines but also approve the gene drives years earlier than it otherwise would be approved.

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 1:22 PM Sebastian S Cocioba <scocioba@gmail.com> wrote:

Male mosquites live off nectar. Fed some fruit juice when I found one in my home that was waaay too big to be female and too big for me to squash. There are talks and warnings of using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive to wipe out the malarial mosquito in as little as 6 generations but thats a whole can of worms. Would be a GREAT topic for discussion on this thread since the public is lapping up the CRISPR hype like crack these days. Anyone see the Gene Drive talk at iGEM last year? I missed it but wanted to go! 

Sebastian S. Cocioba

CEO & Founder

New York Botanics, LLC

Blog: ATinyGreenCell.com

On Feb 8, 2016, at 1:17 PM, Simon Quellen Field <sfield@scitoys.com> wrote:

Only the females drink blood (for egg making).

Perhaps the males are the sole pollinators of some plants?

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On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 10:12 AM, Jonathan Cline <jcline@ieee.org> wrote:

Mosquito's are in the news again as the pillar of all evil (this time due to Zika virus).  What's the ramification of exterminating all mosquitoes - if it could be done?  Do they serve any purpose in ecology other than being a tiny part of the food chain (if so is this tiny part insignificant & replaceable)?

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