Niko, please don't laugh and also consider my plea that I all I know about gene editing , CRISPR and biology can be fitted into a teacup, but... Maybe, just maybe we don't want to eliminate ALL the mosquitoes or even a substantial fraction!? I think mosquitoes are a pretty useless group in general, but perhaps these little flying hypodermics act as gene transfer agents that somehow enhance evolution? Could that be true? I dunno. I just have this vision of some not so intelligent hominid ancestor of ours getting bit by a mosquito and voila, us!
Thanks for your comment, Michael, and for reading. Mosquitoes are a somewhat new area to me, and I wrote about them because I like to learn new things.
My understanding is that neither the Wolbachia approach nor pgSIT would ever eliminate mosquitoes entirely (I'm fairly certain only a really effective gene drive could do that). I'm not sure about evolution or those other considerations. Certainly, mosquitoes play important roles in the ecosystem and we should think about these things carefully before releasing any modified mosquitoes.
Niko, please don't laugh and also consider my plea that I all I know about gene editing , CRISPR and biology can be fitted into a teacup, but... Maybe, just maybe we don't want to eliminate ALL the mosquitoes or even a substantial fraction!? I think mosquitoes are a pretty useless group in general, but perhaps these little flying hypodermics act as gene transfer agents that somehow enhance evolution? Could that be true? I dunno. I just have this vision of some not so intelligent hominid ancestor of ours getting bit by a mosquito and voila, us!
Thanks for your comment, Michael, and for reading. Mosquitoes are a somewhat new area to me, and I wrote about them because I like to learn new things.
My understanding is that neither the Wolbachia approach nor pgSIT would ever eliminate mosquitoes entirely (I'm fairly certain only a really effective gene drive could do that). I'm not sure about evolution or those other considerations. Certainly, mosquitoes play important roles in the ecosystem and we should think about these things carefully before releasing any modified mosquitoes.
So cool! Thanks for this piece!