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posted by n1 on Wednesday January 20 2016, @10:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the arklay-laboratory dept.

A company that creates genetically-modified mosquitoes will open a new factory in Brazil as it expands operations:

Small-scale studies in parts of Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands suggest engineered sterile mosquitoes can reduce wild insect populations by more than 90% when released into the wild. Intrexon said the facility in Piraciciba, São Paulo, will be able to protect 300,000 people.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carry three viruses - Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya.

The studies were carried out by the only company currently trialling GM insects, Oxitec, based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Oxitec, which was spun out from the University of Oxford, was bought by US company Intrexon for $160m (£106m) in August last year. Oxitec CEO Hadyn Parry said: "As the principal source for the fastest growing vector-borne infection in the world in Dengue fever, as well as the increasingly challenging Zika virus, controlling the Aedes aegypti population provides the best defence against these serious diseases for which there are no cures."

Also at The Guardian.

Related: CDC issues interim travel guidance related to Zika virus for 14 Countries and Territories in Central and South America and the Caribbean


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  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:56PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:56PM (#292156) Homepage Journal

    Years ago I learned of the sterile-mosquito technology as a way to limit mosquito populations. But back then they irradiated the mosquitos. This is something I can imagine doing cost-effectively in a factory. But genetically modifying them? One by one because they can't reproduce? That seems like excessive effort.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:23PM (#292204)

    There are multiple options you can use to get around this: you can breed a recessive trait and produce offspring that are homozygous, you can use an inducible/repressor system where the gene is only functional at a certain temperature or in the presence/absence of some small molecule, or the removal of an entire gene is induced by some stimuli.