Let’s do some debugging, pest control with bacteria/ 一起來除蟲,試試用細菌

biuiam (68)in #cn • 7 years ago (edited)

For Chinese version, please scroll down/ 中文版請見文末

Mosquito kills more than you think

Mosquito related disease kill more human than all deaths caused by other animals. Malaria, dengue fever, to more recent zika are all mosquito-borne diseases that cause severe morbidity and mortality to human. This also led to significant economic lost to those endemic diseased regions.

Pesticides was once an effective measures for mosquito controls, but natural selections always take place and pesticides resistant mosquito evolves. Also the non-selective use of pesticides always harm other insects that are beneficial to us.

Verily, the former Google Life Science decided to do pest-control in another way. Just by SIT-ting (SIT : Sterile insect technique). TO put this in simple terms, its is to release a large amount of sterilized insects to out compete the fertile populations for mating partners. Because one of the released gender were sterile, so no offspring could be produced from those mating. And when the sterilized population released is large enough, a local elimination of the wild population can be achieved.

How to sterilize the bugs

This was achieved through the use of bioterrorism against the species Aedes aegypti, and invasive species in the US. The males were infected with a bacteria call Wolbachia pipientis, which makes them sterile, while still competent enough to compete and mate with wild females. The eggs from the reproductive process will not hatch and this gradually eliminates a local population.

Advantage

This method has a lot of advantage, including no use of pesticides which cause no damage and carry overs in the environment. Unlike the broad spectrum of pesticides, sterilized mosquito will only target other mosquito of the same species. This specificity prevents other insects from being killed by the traditional use of pesticides. Furthermore, there was no involvement of chemicals or genetic modifications to generate the sterile males. The bacterial infection from Wolbachia also happens commonly in nature. And given Aedes aegypti is an invasive species to US, an extinction of such species should not post any significant threat to the local ecosystem.

My thoughts

SIT is previously applied in other local area pest elimination before, and being able to control mosquito as a disease-transmitting vector in a more “natural” way is definitely preferred over the use of pesticides. But how they were able to contain the bacteria from infecting other mosquito and insects will be challenging. Any underestimation of in the project can easily lead to environmental disasters. Only certain species of female mosquito bite us, and most mosquito feed on plant sap and they themselves play an important ecological role as prey to other predators. It will be an ideal way to remove invasive species, but still does not solve the needs of those tropical regions, where in the mosquito are in their natural habitat. Much more thorough ecological studies must be carried out before this technology can be applied as a greener method to replace pesticides.

蚊子殺人比你想像的還要多

蚊子相關的疾病引至人類死亡個案遠超與其他動物所造成的死亡個案。蚊子傳播疾病如瘧疾，登革熱，和最近的寨卡都會導致人類有嚴重發病和死亡個案。間接地也導致了這些地方性疾病地區的經濟損失。

殺蟲劑曾經是很有效措施的蚊蟲控制手斷，但物競天擇總是常常發生，抗殺蟲劑的蚊子出現。加上殺蟲劑的非選擇性效用也會傷害其他有益於我們的昆蟲。

事實上，Verily(前Google生命科學部門)決定以另一種方式進行防治蟲害。只是通過坐著（SIT：不育昆蟲技術）。簡單來說，它是釋放大量的不育的昆蟲，以競爭配對伴侶的肥沃人口。因為釋放的性別之一是不育的，所以不能從交配中產生後代。當不育的人口釋放足夠大時，可以把當地的野生種群消滅。

如何使這些蟲子不育

這是通過對埃及伊蚊, 一種美國的外來入侵物種使用生物恐怖主義的。不育的男性蚊蟲被感染了一種叫Wolbachia pipientis 細菌，這使得它們無菌，同時仍然足夠能力與野生雌性競爭和交配。生殖過程中的蟲蛋不會孵化，這逐漸消除了當地人口蚊子數量。

優勢

這種方法有很多優點，包括不使用對環境造成損害和剩余的殺蟲劑。不同於廣譜的殺蟲劑，不育的蚊子只會瞄準同一物種的其他蚊子。這種方法可以防止其他昆蟲被傳統使用殺蟲劑殺死。此外，過程中沒有使用與化學品或基因改造來產生無菌雄性。來自Wolbachia的細菌感染也在大自然中常常發生。埃及伊蚊是美國的入侵物種，這種物種的滅絕不應對當地生態系統發生任何重大威脅。

我的想法

以前在其他小範圍滅蟲計劃中也應用過SIT，並且以更“自然”的方式控制蚊子作為傳播載體是絕對比使用農藥好的選擇。但是，如何能夠控制細菌不感染其他蚊子和昆蟲呢將是一個挑戰。在項目中也低估可能容易導致環境災難。其實只有某幾種的女性蚊子才會咬我們，大多數蚊子對植物汁液的有興趣，並且它們自身在自己的環境起到重要的生態作用，成為其他捕食者的獵物。這也是清除入侵物種的理想方式，不過因為科技還是比較新，這科技仍然不能解決那些熱帶地區的需要，那裡的蚊子在自然棲息地生活。所以在這之前必須進行更徹底的生態研究，才能將此技術化為更環保的方法來替代農藥。

Sources:
https://blog.verily.com/2016/10/introducing-debug-project.html

https://debug.com

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15972950/mosquitoes-google-alphabet-verily-debug-wolbachia-bacteria-fresno-california

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0119288

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia

Photo source:
pixabay.com

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