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Scientists have for the first time released a genetically engineered, self-limiting insect into an open field.
Researchers hope the field test marks the beginning of a turn in the momentum in the war between the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella, and growers of brassica crops like cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower.
Every year, the diamondback moth, sometimes called the cabbage moth, does billions of dollars in crop damage. Scientists have been searching for a way to combat the pest without resorting to stronger and stronger pesticides.
Oxitec, a British biotechnology company, has developed a solution, a self-limiting moth strain.
In a first-of-its-kind field test, researchers at Cornell University released the company's genetically engineered males to interact and mate with their wild counterparts.
"The moth contains a gene that confers female-specific mortality in the larval stage," lead researcher Anthony Shelton, a professor of entomology at Cornell, told UPI in an email. "When the released males mate with females in the field, they carry the male-selecting, self-limiting gene and the female progeny from that mating do not survive, causing the population to decline."
In previous lab tests, modified males successfully competed for mates, passing along the self-limiting gene and stunting reproduction, but researchers need to be certain the genetically engineered moth behaved similarly in the field.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 08 2020, @12:24PM (2 children)
by marrying their first cousins, or having children with their sisters and daughters. centuries later the gene pool is very weak indeed.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 08 2020, @12:40PM
Some humans [nature.com] - also muslims. [intellectualtakeout.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday February 09 2020, @01:44AM
I read somewhere that incest really isn't as bad in humans as we've been taught to believe (genetically speaking), as long as it's between cousins and not siblings, or if siblings ever do have a kid, that their kids don't also commit incest with each other. Not that I recommend rolling the dice this way.
Also, if you look at humans as a species overall, and compare to other mammalian species and even other primate species, we're all severely inbred compared to them. Even though humans span the planet, we're genetically very similar, much more so than two orangutans from different tribes.
https://source.wustl.edu/2011/01/orangutan-dna-more-diverse-than-humans-remarkably-stable-through-the-ages/ [wustl.edu]
Honestly, humans probably have been getting relatively lousy genetics ever since we became apex predator, developed technology, and stopped being killed by other predators.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday February 08 2020, @12:43PM (1 child)
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mothman [fandom.com]
Just... be careful with that science.
There is already a Cult of it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman [wikipedia.org]
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @12:12PM
is that a bunny rabbit?
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Saturday February 08 2020, @01:24PM (2 children)
The normal reaction in nature would be adapt or perish. New genetic traits are amplified when the population is getting smaller and smaller. Therefore, the species will either adapt and recover or it will eventually die out.
The "fix" using genetic modification is just as temporary as a pesticide. The consequences are just as dire and unpredictable. If the species goes extinct, then whole subordinate ecosystems may perish as well (law of unintended consequences). If the species adapts, then it will become more and more difficult to suppress/kill in the future and may also swamp other ecosystems.
Why not try something new? Work with nature, not against it. Take advantage of the complexity and use it in the chain of production. Use diversity to improve agriculture instead of hanging on to mono-cultures.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 08 2020, @01:34PM
Yes Mr Lysenko; Diversity in action! [bbc.co.uk]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Saturday February 08 2020, @03:57PM
> Adapt or perish.
Quite so - which is what makes this kind of genetic disease is particularly pernicious - it attacks part of the life cycle where there is very limited competition. Normally such a developmental disease would not be gender-linked, and would be quickly weeded out from the population, but this one leaves the males unimpeded to compete, and has a very real chance of driving the species to extinction.
How big a problem extinction would be remains an open question - there's lots of fast-breeding (and thus fast-evolving) competition for ecological niches in the insect world. Unless this moth performs a particularly specific and important role, another species will likely fill its niche in short order. And and at the rate we're driving species to extinction through carelessness (potentially hundreds per day), I have a hard time getting too worked up about intentionally adding a handful of the most troublesome species to the list.
The biggest threat I see to the extinction possibility, is that the disease migrates into other species through hybridization. In the last few generations of the extinction spiral, as the number of females plunges precipitously, you're going to have a whole lot of hard-up males, which will likely increase the amount of interbreeding with closely related species, and with it the number of viable, fertile, hybrid offspring that can serve as a bridge for the disease to enter a new species. Unlike a gene drive though, this disease won't necessarily be passed on to 100% of the offspring, and will follow the
As for the alternative - adaption - I see no reason to assume it would make the species any more difficult to kill. Evolution doesn't make species objectively better - just better able to handle a current ongoing threat or opportunity in their ecosystem. In this case it would likely take the form of some subset of females that for whatever reason find the carrier males unsuitable mates becoming the "Eves" of a genetically bottle-necked population. That doesn't make them any better at surviving unrelated threats - in fact it makes them weaker due to the resulting decrease in genetic diversity as one particular trait is strongly selected for at the expense of all others. This study actually shows that effect - pesticide resistance is decreased in the populations attacked with this genetic disease.
Poison resistance works similarly - so long as we apply ever-increasing amounts of a particular pesticide to our crops, the pests will evolve and ever-increasing resistance to that poison - and quite likely to a whole family of similar poisons as well. But it won't make them any more resistant to unrelated poisons. If we could keep inventing new unrelated poisons, pesticide resistance wouldn't be a problem. The problem is that it's extremely challenging coming up with new poisons that affect pests far more strongly than humans or our crops. We're all surprisingly similar at a cellular level - there's a whole lot of cellular apparatus that evolved before animals and plants split into separate evolutionary branches, and a whole lot more that evolved before insects split away from our own ancestors. Pesticides are mostly limited to only attacking only that small subset of cellular processes that evolved differently in insects.
As for harnessing complexity - I agree it would be a better option, if we could do it effectively. But the very lack of understanding of ecosystem complexity that makes unintended consequences such a danger, also means we're at the "finger painting" stage of harnessing that complexity to our own ends (at best). I have no doubt that we'll get there eventually, but I suspect we're at *least* several generations away from understanding the ecosystem well enough to harness complexity as effectively as we can harness our current blunt weapons. Meanwhile the global population keeps climbing, and we can't afford to have our farming yields diminish significantly unless we're willing to pay the price in famine and war.
we barely understand ecosystem interc
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 08 2020, @02:35PM
since farmers are the "original source" of (solar) energy that powers all kinds of humankind they unfortunately also power the greedy that promise that the money invested in "limp" moths will make them earn MEOR(tm) money! ^_^
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 08 2020, @09:45PM
Vampire Moths
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Sunday February 09 2020, @05:54AM
Seriously, how long will it really take to truly release this mythical man-moth?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @09:11PM
Cartoons have reliably informed us what happens with moths and wallets.