Got to Africa

A small African country is ready to take part in a big biotech game

Sergey Akishkin, GearMix based on Futurism: Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Are About to Fly Free in Africa

On Wednesday, researchers announced that they had secured permission from the government of Burkina Faso to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild.

This step is part of a long-term plan to eradicate malaria-transmitting species. This will be the first release of any genetically modified animals into the African wild (genetically modified mosquitoes were first released into the wild in Brazil).

Malevolent Malaria (swamp fever)

Infection with malaria plasmodia – the causative agents of malaria – occurs when parasites infect malaria mosquitoes, and then these insects transmit them to humans. At the beginning of the XXI century, the incidence of malaria was 350-500 million cases per year, of which 1.3–3 million ended in death

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Africa (CDC), 445,000 people died from malaria in 2016, and most of them were children. If we get rid of this type of mosquito – or at least reduce its number, we can reduce the number of malaria cases and deaths worldwide.

The mosquitoes that the researchers plan to release in the village of Burkinabe in the province of Bane this month will be genetically modified in such a way as to make them sterile. While this step is not aimed at the complete eradication of malaria, sterile mosquitoes, competing with wild specimens, will somewhat reduce the number of the latter.

The ultimate goal

If this goal is achieved, the researchers plan to expand the experiment to the whole of Burkina Faso, as well as to the African peoples of Mali and Uganda, releasing myriads of mosquitoes with altered genes into the wild. Unlike the mosquitoes approved by the Government of Burkina Faso, these mosquitoes will be genetically modified in such a way as to transmit gene mutations to wild mosquitoes in order to reduce their population, since they will pass on the mutations we need to all their descendants.

If the release of genetically modified sterile mosquitoes leads to some unforeseen consequences, we can just wait until all these insects die out naturally. But if we release the mosquitoes spreading the target genes into the wild, we really won't have the "cancel" button anymore.

But given the number of deaths from malaria, the risk may be worth the potential threat.

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