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Speaker 1: If you live in most places in the United States,

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Speaker 1: mosquitoes are a massive annoyance.

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Speaker 2: They've ruined a good hike, They've ruined a.

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Speaker 1: Beautiful night camping under the stars, They've ruined delicious picnics,

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Speaker 1: and they've ruin breathtaking sunsets.

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Speaker 2: They are the worst.

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Speaker 1: But if you live in an area where mosquitos carry

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Speaker 1: deadly diseases like malaria, dengey, yellow fever, or zeka, they're

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Speaker 1: also potentially deadly. According to the Centers for Disease Control,

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Speaker 1: malaria alone killed five hundred and ninety seven thousand people

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 2: So what are our options.

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Speaker 1: Mosquitoes have developed resistance to our insecticides, and insecticides in

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Speaker 1: general aren't great for ecosystems because they often kill a

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Speaker 1: bunch of other stuff as well. But what if we

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Speaker 1: could use new genetic tools to drive some mosquito species

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Speaker 1: to extend or make those mosquitoes resistant to diseases so

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Speaker 1: they can no longer transmit those diseases to us. Today,

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Speaker 1: we're going to respond to some listener questions about mosquitoes.

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Speaker 1: We'll chat about how mosquitoes find us, how genetic engineering

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Speaker 1: could be used to combat mosquitoes and how you undertake

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Speaker 1: the tricky task of estimating how mosquito population sizes are

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Speaker 1: changing over time. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Mosquito Infested Universe.

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Speaker 3: Hi.

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Speaker 4: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I have a

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Speaker 4: top five list of animals i'd like to see genocided

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Speaker 4: off the planet.

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Speaker 1: Oh Man starting an episode with the word genocide.

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Speaker 2: Not loving that. Hi, I'm Kelly Waiter Smith.

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Speaker 1: I study parasites and space, and I was going to

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Speaker 1: say I'm buzzing with enthusiasm for this topic, but Daniel

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Speaker 1: started with genocides, So my enthusiasm has been shot through.

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Speaker 4: Did that sting you a little bit? Scratching the wrong

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Speaker 4: itch over there?

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Speaker 2: I can't, I can't, I can't. All right, what are

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Speaker 2: the five insects that you like the least, Daniel? We

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Speaker 2: could put it that way too, you know.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, number five mosquitoes, Number four mosquitoes, number three mosquitoes,

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Speaker 4: number two mosquitoes, and number one coming in at the

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Speaker 4: top of the list is mosquito.

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Speaker 2: Yes, predictable list. Yeah. I'm not a mosquito fan really either.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely, And so I'm fascinated today that we're going to

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Speaker 4: be talking about the science of mosquitoes and learning about

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Speaker 4: everything that biologists can do to improve our quality of life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a biologists and engineers. A variety of folks

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Speaker 1: for many decades have been trying to do battle with mosquitoes,

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Speaker 1: and you know, in the last few decades, we now

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Speaker 1: have some genetic tools that we can use that might give.

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Speaker 2: Us the leg up.

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Speaker 4: And your focus, of course, is on eradicating disease, caring

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Speaker 4: mosquitoes because that kills people and all that stuff and

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Speaker 4: that along the way. Along the way, I would to

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Speaker 4: eradicate Daniel's suffering from mosquito bites, because that's what it's

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Speaker 4: really all about. In the end, It's about me and

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Speaker 4: my itches.

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Speaker 1: Right, No, i'd say no, Yeah, I don't actually know that.

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Speaker 1: I would advocate for eliminating mosquitoes that are annoying but

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Speaker 1: don't transmit disease, although I guess in California do do

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Speaker 1: your mosquitoes transmit Wes Nile?

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Speaker 4: I don't know. I have heard of cases, but I'm

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Speaker 4: not sure. But really, for me, it's just all about

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Speaker 4: the itches. I'm not a great sleeper and I'm very

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Speaker 4: responsive to mosquito bites, which means if I get too

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Speaker 4: many mosquito bites, then I'm up all nights scratching them.

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Speaker 4: So it's really a bummer. I would happily actually donate

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Speaker 4: my blood to the mosquitoes if we could make a deal,

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Speaker 4: like if I could just put out a little like

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Speaker 4: saucer of blood every night and be like, here's your

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Speaker 4: blood meal, leave me alone. I would make that deal

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Speaker 4: no trouble at all. So if the mosquito's lawyer wants

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Speaker 4: to reach out and to go she ates some sort

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Speaker 4: of settlement like that, I am open for business.

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Speaker 1: All yes, So you give your fecal sample to your

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Speaker 1: wife and your blood sample to the mosquitoes.

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Speaker 2: Everybody needs a part of Daniel.

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Speaker 4: Come take a sample exactly. Matt will take an audio sample.

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Speaker 4: Here we go.

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Speaker 2: All right.

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Speaker 1: Well, then you will be very excited to hear today

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Speaker 1: that there are a variety of cutting edge techniques for

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Speaker 1: in some cases straight up eradicating mosquitos and in other

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Speaker 1: cases just trying to make it so that they can't

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Speaker 1: carry disease anymore.

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Speaker 4: I like the sound a straight up eradication.

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Speaker 1: Well, I reached out to our extraordinaries and asked them

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Speaker 1: what they think the most promising techniques for eradicating disease

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Speaker 1: carrying mosquitoes are and let's go ahead and hear what

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Speaker 1: they had to say, treat.

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Speaker 5: The water where they breed, kill the larvae.

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Speaker 6: Someone far smarter than I am must have a technique

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Speaker 6: to get them to stop breeding. I like what they've

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Speaker 6: done in the past with releasing genetically modified ones so

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Speaker 6: that it reduces the population and potentially targets those disease

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Speaker 6: carrying ones, because the generic sprays kill all sorts of

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Speaker 6: insects and they are beneficial for the ecosystem.

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Speaker 7: Does the Geneva convention apply to mosquitoes? That does, I'd

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Speaker 7: have to say some bioengineered aerosol that wouldn't harm other

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Speaker 7: living creatures.

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Speaker 8: The one technique I know right now is that some

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Speaker 8: larvacide is spread during mosquito season. I'm not so sure

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Speaker 8: that is the most promising technique, since that's been done

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Speaker 8: for a long time and we still get a lot

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Speaker 8: of mosquitos.

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Speaker 9: It appears the sterile insect technique is the most promising method,

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Speaker 9: though I'm not sure if that will eradicate or just

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Speaker 9: vastly reduce population numbers, and is nowhere near as fun

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Speaker 9: as an electrified racket swater.

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Speaker 10: We would genetically engineer some very attractive but sterile mosquitos,

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Speaker 10: dispatch them two the affected areas. Let dat run its course,

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Speaker 10: and over time the population will fade away.

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Speaker 11: Do the thing they're doing with the screw worms and

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Speaker 11: doing like sterilized ones. And I really do hope that

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Speaker 11: you kill all mosquitos, because they love me. I am

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Speaker 11: foreign food here in the UK, even though I'm havy English,

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Speaker 11: So kill them all.

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are on the same

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Speaker 1: page with you, Daniel eradicating mosquitos.

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Speaker 2: They are on board.

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Speaker 4: It sounds like somebody else spoke to the mosquito's lawyer

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Speaker 4: because they're referencing the Geneva Convention and like getting illegal

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Speaker 4: about it. Oh my gosh.

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Speaker 1: I know, I know these things are intense well. And

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Speaker 1: you know, in the United States, if you do want

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Speaker 1: to release some method for eradicating mosquitos, you do need

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Speaker 1: to go through like the USDA, the EPA. We'll talk

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Speaker 1: about this a little bit more later. There's some legal

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Speaker 1: stuff involved.

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Speaker 4: I think that probably makes sense. Somebody should think about

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Speaker 4: whether these are good ideas before we just like let

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Speaker 4: scientists do things. Willy nilly, I'm for that.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. We've

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Speaker 1: messed things up a few times in the past.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know.

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Speaker 4: Right now, we can't be trusted to make our own decisions.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think some oversight is warranted.

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Speaker 4: That's a good way to put it.

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Speaker 2: We get a little over enthusiastic.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, we knew because the universe is amazing and we

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Speaker 4: just want to learn stuff and we think we have

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Speaker 4: it figured out, and so yeah, we just want to

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Speaker 4: press the big red button sometimes.

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Speaker 1: Well, today we're going to be learning specifically about answers

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Speaker 1: to questions that we got from listeners. And we called

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Speaker 1: in a little bit of backup because any biology topic

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Speaker 1: is improved by having Katrina Whiteson join the podcast. So

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Speaker 1: let's invite Katrina on the show.

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Speaker 4: It's my great pleasure to welcome back to the podcast,

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Speaker 4: our most popular, our most frequent guest, also winner of

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Speaker 4: the whites In Unable to Say No To a Podcast

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Speaker 4: Invitation Award, doctor and Professor Katrina Whitson.

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Speaker 5: Wow, thank you for the glamorous introduction.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for being willing to come back on the

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Speaker 1: show again. We always love having you.

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Speaker 5: Well. Thanks all around, all right.

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Speaker 2: Let's dive right in.

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Speaker 1: So we have a couple questions from Robert Shackelford, who

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Speaker 1: is a high school teacher who wanted to know about mosquito.

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Speaker 2: Let's dive in.

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Speaker 12: Hello, Daniel and Kelly, this is Robert on Samun Island

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Speaker 12: in Washington State. And I'm curious about mosquitoes. Well, it's

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Speaker 12: probably more accurate to say they seem to be curious

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Speaker 12: about me, unfortunately. And where we live there's a pond nearby,

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Speaker 12: and if you're anywhere near the pond, you will get

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Speaker 12: bidden right away. Further from the pond, it's not so

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Speaker 12: bad unless you're stationary, and then they will find you.

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Speaker 12: And when they find you, they really find you. And

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Speaker 12: that has me wondering if they are coordinating their attack somehow,

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Speaker 12: if they are watching each other, or if they are

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Speaker 12: our little mosquito walkie talkies I don't know, or they're

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Speaker 12: just acting individually on the same clues to find the victim.

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Speaker 12: And then similarly, I would love to know how many

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Speaker 12: mosquitoes I'm up against, right, it's important.

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Speaker 4: To know your enemy.

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Speaker 12: And how would you ever estimate a mosquito population? I

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Speaker 12: know there's some techniques for estimating wildlife, say birds, by

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Speaker 12: tagging them and then recapturing them later, But I can

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Speaker 12: imagine doing that with mosquitos. Sorry, Kelly, I can't imagine

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Speaker 12: even the best biologist having the ability to take little

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Speaker 12: tag number forty two and glue it to a mosquito's

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Speaker 12: leg and be able to capture it later. So I'm curious.

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Speaker 12: Is there a way Is that number even that knowable?

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Speaker 12: Is there a way to make a good estimate of

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Speaker 12: mosquito population? Really curious? Thank you so much for taking

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Speaker 12: on my question. Look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Speaker 4: Wonderful question. I love hearing from high school teachers, and

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Speaker 4: thank you to all the teachers out there working on

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Speaker 4: the front lines of education to make society a better

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Speaker 4: place than everybody smarter.

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Speaker 2: You all are heroes.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much, And I am thrilled to get

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Speaker 1: to educate folks about mosquitos, which I have to admit

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Speaker 1: I hate.

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Speaker 4: It's not hard to admit you hate mosquitos. It's joyful.

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Speaker 1: I guess don't know how many collegist I'm supposed to

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Speaker 1: like almost everything, but I have to admit dipterines, which

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Speaker 1: are like mosquitos and flies, I'm not a big fan

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Speaker 1: of well.

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Speaker 4: You know, I used to say all the time that

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Speaker 4: mosquitos are the one thing you could like erase from

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Speaker 4: the planet and not have any negative effects. But then

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Speaker 4: some listeners sent me an article about how mosquitos helped

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Speaker 4: chocolate help cocoa beans pollinate each other, and I was like, uh, oh,

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Speaker 4: I'm not sure if I had to give up mosquitos

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Speaker 4: if I would also give up chocolate.

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Speaker 1: It sounds a little bit tough at first, but when

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Speaker 1: you consider that mosquitoes transmit malaria, which kills almost six

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand people a year, I would give up chocolate

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Speaker 1: for that.

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Speaker 4: I mean, I hear you, But we're talking about chocolate here, Kelly.

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Speaker 2: We're talking about children, Daniel.

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Speaker 1: But I have to remember that you are willing to

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Speaker 1: give up all of humanity to get one answer from

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Speaker 1: an alien.

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Speaker 2: We had that discussion the.

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Speaker 4: Other that juicy answer. But yes, yes, I am, that's true,

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Speaker 4: all right.

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Speaker 1: I'll note that his wife was also shaking her head

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Speaker 1: in disbelief.

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Speaker 4: I don't like this new number of podcast hosts where

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Speaker 4: I can get outvoted.

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Speaker 2: We'll go back to mosquitoes.

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Speaker 1: Mosquitos are often enlisted as the deadliest animals on the

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Speaker 1: planet Wow. And one of the problems caused by mosquitos

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Speaker 1: is that they transmit malaria. There are over five hundred

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Speaker 1: Anoplies mosquito species, so this is like a genus of mosquito,

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Speaker 1: and about sixty of those species are able to transmit malaria.

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Speaker 1: Mosquitos also transmit Dangae west Niles zega lymphatic philoriasis, and

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Speaker 1: so mosquitoes are estimated to kill indirectly up to a

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Speaker 1: million people a year. But I've never felt like this

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Speaker 1: is super fair to pin on mosquitos, even though I

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Speaker 1: hate mosquitoes, because it's like, isn't it the individual responsibility

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Speaker 1: of all of those diseases. It's not necessarily the mosquitoes.

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Speaker 1: But I get I get it.

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Speaker 13: They were unwilling partners. Nobody like, they didn't say, yeah,

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Speaker 13: bring on that plasmodium. They were just like flying a rods.

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Speaker 13: But they do drink blood. I mean, I don't know.

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Speaker 4: I mean, Kelly, if I came over to your house

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Speaker 4: and drank your blood and give you some weird disease,

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Speaker 4: I think you'd blame me for anything you got, wouldn't you?

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Speaker 2: You wouldn't be invited again. That's true.

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Speaker 1: And you would be breaking a lot of social wars

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Speaker 1: to do that, and laws and laws and laws. Right,

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Speaker 1: But does anybody want to guess? This surprised me a little,

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Speaker 1: But it shouldn't have. On the list of species that

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Speaker 1: kill humans, mosquitoes are at the top. What species is second?

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Speaker 1: The next most killing e species kills about half as

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Speaker 1: many humans each year. But what would you guess? That

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Speaker 1: species is?

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Speaker 4: Raccoons? Those are ferocious? Have you heard that story about raccoons?

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Speaker 4: Don't have a pet raccoon? FYI, and don't google what

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Speaker 4: happens if you lead a raccoon in a room with

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Speaker 4: your baby.

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Speaker 5: Oh, definitely don't google that.

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Speaker 13: But I would guess it's microbial. I mean, it has

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Speaker 13: to be microbial. Microbes rule the world. So now I've

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Speaker 13: got to like pick from microbes, and I really should

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Speaker 13: know this.

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Speaker 5: I mean, it could be tuberculosis.

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Speaker 2: Bacteria that is still a problem which.

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Speaker 5: Infects a third of humans. Or it could be real raccoons,

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Speaker 5: my gosh.

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Speaker 13: Some kind of parasite, some kind of eukaryotic parasite.

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Speaker 5: Is that what it is?

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Speaker 2: It's humans?

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Speaker 5: Oh my god?

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Speaker 2: Oh that's so good.

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Speaker 4: I think Katrina gets points because we are eukaryotic parasites, right,

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Speaker 4: So there you go.

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Speaker 1: There you go point So Katrina essentially got it right.

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Speaker 1: One point for Katrina, zero points for raccoons.

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Speaker 13: From Daniel, I'm not gonna I can't take any points.

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Speaker 13: I was going down a totally wrong road there, and

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Speaker 13: I really thought it was my crogial, you know.

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Speaker 1: I also felt like you could just blame bacteria across

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Speaker 1: the board. But anyway, the list right now has humans.

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Speaker 1: I guess we kill about half a million of each

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Speaker 1: other every year, which is depressing.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 1: But all right, let's talk about the mosquito life cycle

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Speaker 1: real quick, because understanding the life cycle is necessary if

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Speaker 1: you're going to understand how you can try to eradicate

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Speaker 1: mosquitos by breaking part of the life cycle.

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Speaker 2: So first, let's note.

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Speaker 1: There's lots of mosquito species, like over three thousand, five

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Speaker 1: hundred mosquito species. They don't all bite humans. The ones

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Speaker 1: that you bite humans are females. The males actually don't

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Speaker 1: take blood meals, and the females apparently need the blood

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Speaker 1: to make eggs. Okay, so if you get bit it's

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Speaker 1: a female, don't blame the female. They're just doing what

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Speaker 1: evolution made them. Do but anyway, so they do the

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Speaker 1: blood meal. So they get a blood meal, they lay

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Speaker 1: their eggs in a body of water, the eggs hatch

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Speaker 1: in the water, and then they've got this aquatic stage

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Speaker 1: where they look like these sort of like frilly little

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Speaker 1: specks of dirt that kind of move around like crazy

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Speaker 1: all over the place. Sometimes you might see them in

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Speaker 1: like a bird feeder in the middle of the summer

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Speaker 1: or something. And then they have another stage where they

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Speaker 1: essentially like stay near the surface and they're kind of

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Speaker 1: getting oxygen from the surface. And then they emerge out

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Speaker 1: of the aquatic environment as adults and they go off

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Speaker 1: and you know, mate with each other and go off

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Speaker 1: in search of blood.

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Speaker 4: And all this happens in hours or days.

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Speaker 1: Or depends on the species. There's a lot of variability,

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Speaker 1: but an egg can take something like seven to ten

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Speaker 1: days to develop into an adult, and then when they're

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Speaker 1: an adult, I think they've got like a week or

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Speaker 1: a few weeks. They don't live for very long, so.

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Speaker 4: When a mosquito is biting you, it's like one of

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Speaker 4: a few dozen meals it's gonna have in its lifetime,

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Speaker 4: or how many blood meals does a mosquito have in

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Speaker 4: their whole lifetime.

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Speaker 1: They must be taking more than one blood meal. But

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Speaker 1: I think they only mate with a male once in

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Speaker 1: their life and lay eggs once, and that has to

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Speaker 1: be the case for a bunch of the techniques that

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Speaker 1: we talk about later to work.

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Speaker 4: Well. I know that in southern California we have two

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Speaker 4: different kinds of mosquitos. So the ones that come and

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Speaker 4: give you one really big juicy bite and then move on,

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Speaker 4: and another tiny version that come in bye you like

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Speaker 4: four times in a row.

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Speaker 2: Oh they're all awful.

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Speaker 4: Though, they're all awful.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, thumbs down. Well, so then how do they find you?

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Speaker 1: So Robert wanted to know if they're like communicating with

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Speaker 1: each other so that they can swarm and get to you,

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Speaker 1: and I don't think that that's what's happening. I didn't

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Speaker 1: find any evidence that a mosquito is like altruistic enough

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Speaker 1: to be like, hey, there's a snack over here, fellas,

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Speaker 1: or I guess, ladies, Hey, ladies, there's a snack over here,

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Speaker 1: because it's all females do in the feeding. I think

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Speaker 1: that the only times they swarm on purpose is when

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Speaker 1: they're trying to mate, and so usually they're not sharing information.

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Speaker 1: But the way they find you is a multi step process. First,

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Speaker 1: they detect the carbon dioxide that we breathe out, and

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Speaker 1: then they follow the carbon dioxide trail until they get

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Speaker 1: close to us. When they start getting close enough to us,

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Speaker 1: they start detecting some odors that we give off. And

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Speaker 1: these odors can be things like ketones, lactic acids, and Katrina,

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Speaker 1: I read that a lot of the odors we give

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Speaker 1: off are related to our microbiome exactly.

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Speaker 13: I even had a whole grant once. I didn't get it,

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Speaker 13: but I wrote a grant with a bunch of people.

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Speaker 13: It was a military grant, and the goal was to

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Speaker 13: make soldiers invisible to mosquitoes. And you're going to do

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Speaker 13: it by changing their skin microbiomes. And you know, some

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Speaker 13: people are just so juicy to mosquitos and they get

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Speaker 13: bitten all the time and others don't. And we don't

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Speaker 13: know why really, but I think it could be related

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Speaker 13: to the microbiome and the volatiles that the microbes are

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Speaker 13: emitting that the mosquitoes can detect, and so anyway, it

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Speaker 13: might be that that's something we can change.

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Speaker 5: Like, that's pretty amazing.

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Speaker 4: Hold on a second, I just put two and two together.

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Speaker 4: I live in a house where I'm the one getting

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Speaker 4: bitten by mosquitoes all the time, and I also live

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Speaker 4: in a house where somebody knows how to manipulate people's microbiomes.

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Speaker 4: And I just heard that microbiomes are the number one

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Speaker 4: influence and who gets bitten by mosquitoes? Hmm, Okay, I'm

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Speaker 4: gonna have to think about that.

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Speaker 13: Okay, This mosquito preference thing has been going on since

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Speaker 13: way before I learned about microbiomes.

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Speaker 4: I see, so you've been guilty for a long time,

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Speaker 4: got it, got it all right?

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Speaker 5: But it could be a life goal.

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Speaker 4: But for the individual mosquito, Kelly, this is not, like

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Speaker 4: you know, they have complicated sensors. I'm imagining they're like

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Speaker 4: flying through the air and they sort of veer towards

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Speaker 4: the CO two instead of away from it. It's sort

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Speaker 4: of like moths being attracted to light. Is that how

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Speaker 4: it works?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I mean I think it might be under selling it

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Speaker 1: a little bit to say that they don't have complicated sensors.

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Speaker 1: So like moths, for example, the males who have to

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Speaker 1: find the females, they have super feathery antenna and nobody

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Speaker 1: can see.

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Speaker 2: But I have hand antennas right now.

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Speaker 4: You're looking very mathia, I thank.

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Speaker 2: You, thank you.

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Speaker 1: And they, you know, have an incredible surface area, and

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Speaker 1: they're able to detect chemicals that the females put into

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Speaker 1: the environment and follow that chemical trail to find a female.

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Speaker 1: And so, you know, like insects, they you know, they

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Speaker 1: might not look super impressive, but they do have pretty

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Speaker 1: impressive ways of detecting cues in the environment. Like I

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Speaker 1: can't detect CO two and use it to find my

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Speaker 1: dog when she's not coming in the middle of the

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Speaker 1: night when I call her. So anyway, I'm impressed. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not super complicated.

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Speaker 13: I mean, I think there's a lot of sensors that

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Speaker 13: we actually don't know what they are. That's something that

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Speaker 13: I'm so fascinated by that apparently, you know, we have

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Speaker 13: these sensory receptors that we know about in our nose

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Speaker 13: and our tongue, like you hear about the sense of taste,

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Speaker 13: But actually we have those kind of receptors all.

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Speaker 5: Over the place.

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Speaker 13: They're in our skin, they're in our guts, like babies

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Speaker 13: have them when they're developing, and so I think those

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Speaker 13: receptors are binding molecules we don't even know what they

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Speaker 13: are yet, and I would not be surprised the mosquitoes

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Speaker 13: have a lot of that going on.

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Speaker 4: You're saying we can taste with our hands and stuff

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Speaker 4: like that, exactly. I see. So when I swat a

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Speaker 4: mosquito and I feel that like moment of satisfaction, it's like,

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Speaker 4: literally delicious.

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Speaker 5: Let me just back up on that.

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Speaker 13: I'm saying, there's receptors that are sensing those molecules and

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Speaker 13: you're having a response. The response is not lighting up

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Speaker 13: the taste receptors in your brain, at least.

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Speaker 2: Not for me.

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Speaker 13: I mean, I don't know about you, but I think

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Speaker 13: it's like lighting up something that not necessarily that we're

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Speaker 13: even aware of it in our brain, but it could

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Speaker 13: be like affecting our physiology.

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Speaker 5: You know.

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Speaker 1: We had Stephen Munger on the show to talk about

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Speaker 1: taste and smell, and he was talking about how we

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Speaker 1: have receptors for things like even in our hearts, and

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Speaker 1: it's not quite clear why we have them. So if

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Speaker 1: folks want to learn more about that, they should check

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Speaker 1: out the Manger episode because we talk about that for

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Speaker 1: a little bit. It's totally fascinating in my opinion.

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Speaker 4: All Right, so, but we were talking about how mosquitoes

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Speaker 4: find hosts, and you're saying, at first they look for

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Speaker 4: clouds of CO two, and then as they get closer,

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Speaker 4: they're looking for skin odorans that give them cues to

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Speaker 4: where you are, and then what walk us through through

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Speaker 4: all the way to the bite.

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Speaker 1: And then they're looking for heat and humidity. And so

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Speaker 1: I don't think we know exactly how they decide, like

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Speaker 1: I'm going to bite their arm as opposed to their leg.

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Speaker 1: It might be whatever they encounter first, because you want

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Speaker 1: to get the bite in there and get out. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: those are the cues that they use. The cues change

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Speaker 1: depending on how close they are to us. Some people

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Speaker 1: give off more cues, as Katrina mentioned, that could be

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Speaker 1: because of their microbiome. There's some evidence that women in

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Speaker 1: their third trimester are also more attractive to mosquitoes. And

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Speaker 1: the idea there is that we are breathing more and

443
00:20:30,240 --> 00:20:32,399
Speaker 1: more heavily and we give off more CO two, so

444
00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:35,760
Speaker 1: we're easier for mosquitos to find. I certainly was breathing heavily.

445
00:20:35,760 --> 00:20:38,119
Speaker 1: I remember my mom being like, do you have to

446
00:20:38,160 --> 00:20:38,879
Speaker 1: be so loud?

447
00:20:39,359 --> 00:20:42,959
Speaker 2: And I was like I do. I'm breathing for two.

448
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:44,080
Speaker 8: Uh.

449
00:20:45,280 --> 00:20:49,080
Speaker 1: But yeah, the mosquitoes apparently love that. All right, So

450
00:20:49,280 --> 00:20:52,120
Speaker 1: now we know how mosquitoes find us, But now how

451
00:20:52,119 --> 00:20:54,840
Speaker 1: do you figure out how many mosquitoes are in an area?

452
00:20:55,560 --> 00:20:59,080
Speaker 1: So Robert had this great insight, which is that often

453
00:20:59,119 --> 00:21:00,960
Speaker 1: when we are trying to faitigure out how many of

454
00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:04,119
Speaker 1: a certain species is in a particular environment, we use

455
00:21:04,160 --> 00:21:07,639
Speaker 1: this technique called mark recapture, and it would be really

456
00:21:07,640 --> 00:21:11,320
Speaker 1: hard to mark and recapture mosquito. So mark recapture is

457
00:21:11,320 --> 00:21:13,840
Speaker 1: a procedure where you essentially go out into an environment

458
00:21:14,080 --> 00:21:17,040
Speaker 1: twice to collect animals. The first time you go out,

459
00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:19,440
Speaker 1: you collect you know, as many animals as you can

460
00:21:19,520 --> 00:21:22,000
Speaker 1: with whatever technique. So, for example, I used to go

461
00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:24,520
Speaker 1: sample fish and I would use what's called fight nets.

462
00:21:24,840 --> 00:21:27,840
Speaker 1: You essentially put a net that goes one side of

463
00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:29,520
Speaker 1: it is in like the middle of a lake. The

464
00:21:29,560 --> 00:21:32,240
Speaker 1: other side goes to the shoreline. As the fish swim

465
00:21:32,280 --> 00:21:34,480
Speaker 1: along the shoreline, they hit the net that hits the

466
00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:37,159
Speaker 1: shoreline and they follow it essentially into a funnel that

467
00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:39,359
Speaker 1: they can't get out of. And then you sample that

468
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:42,480
Speaker 1: once a day. Does that make sense mm hm? Okay,

469
00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,360
Speaker 1: So we trap fish, we take the fish out, we

470
00:21:45,680 --> 00:21:48,119
Speaker 1: tag the fish in a way where we will know

471
00:21:48,200 --> 00:21:50,639
Speaker 1: if we've seen them before or not, and then we

472
00:21:50,680 --> 00:21:53,400
Speaker 1: release them back into the environment. And then a week

473
00:21:53,480 --> 00:21:55,280
Speaker 1: or two later, we go out again and we use

474
00:21:55,359 --> 00:21:57,920
Speaker 1: another technique to catch as many fish as we can.

475
00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:00,840
Speaker 1: In this case, we're using an electro fishing boat where

476
00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:03,520
Speaker 1: you stun the fish temporarily, you bring them into a

477
00:22:03,560 --> 00:22:06,200
Speaker 1: live well on the boat where it's got a lot

478
00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:08,840
Speaker 1: of water circulating so that they can come to and

479
00:22:08,840 --> 00:22:12,040
Speaker 1: stay safe. And then you count how many fish you collected,

480
00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:14,680
Speaker 1: and you look to see how many of them you're

481
00:22:14,760 --> 00:22:16,920
Speaker 1: catching for the second time, so how many of them

482
00:22:16,920 --> 00:22:19,640
Speaker 1: showed up in both of your samples, And so then

483
00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:23,919
Speaker 1: you're making this assumption that the proportion of animals that

484
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:28,119
Speaker 1: you re caught in your second sample is similar to

485
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:31,919
Speaker 1: the proportion of animals that you caught the first time

486
00:22:32,520 --> 00:22:36,000
Speaker 1: in the entire population. So, for example, if I caught

487
00:22:36,040 --> 00:22:38,400
Speaker 1: fifty fish in my first sample and marked them all,

488
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:40,520
Speaker 1: and then I went out and I caught one hundred

489
00:22:40,600 --> 00:22:43,719
Speaker 1: fish in my second sample, ten of which were already

490
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:46,600
Speaker 1: marked individuals, the way that I would capture this is

491
00:22:46,640 --> 00:22:49,280
Speaker 1: I would say fifty times one hundred which is the

492
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:52,159
Speaker 1: number of fish I captured in both of my samples,

493
00:22:52,520 --> 00:22:54,960
Speaker 1: and divide by ten, which is the number of individuals

494
00:22:55,000 --> 00:22:57,359
Speaker 1: I caught twice, and that would give me an estimate

495
00:22:57,359 --> 00:23:00,439
Speaker 1: that there's five hundred fish in the population, all right.

496
00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:02,600
Speaker 4: So the goal here is to get a sense for

497
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:04,920
Speaker 4: how many animals there are total. Of course, you can't

498
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:08,280
Speaker 4: measure all of the animals, and so you measure twice

499
00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 4: and then you look at the overlap because like, if

500
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:12,920
Speaker 4: you have one hundred percent overlap between your two measurements,

501
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:15,040
Speaker 4: that means you have a smaller population. If you have

502
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:17,520
Speaker 4: no overlap between your two measurements, then you have a

503
00:23:17,520 --> 00:23:20,679
Speaker 4: bigger population because you're getting like different subsets of the

504
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:22,560
Speaker 4: whole population. Is that the way to think.

505
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:23,320
Speaker 2: About it exactly?

506
00:23:23,480 --> 00:23:25,879
Speaker 13: Yes, Yeah, Like if you mark one hundred fish and

507
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:28,320
Speaker 13: then the next day every single fish is marked, it

508
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:30,960
Speaker 13: suggests there's not really any other fish out there. But

509
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:33,240
Speaker 13: if only ten percent of them are marked, then it

510
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:36,320
Speaker 13: suggests that the population has another ninety percent out.

511
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:39,600
Speaker 4: There, right, cool, all right, So that's how mark and

512
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:41,960
Speaker 4: recapture studies work to get a sense for like how

513
00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 4: many birds are there, or how many cheetahs are there,

514
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 4: But what do you do for mosquitoes. You can't capture

515
00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:49,119
Speaker 4: and mark mosquitoes, can you.

516
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:51,680
Speaker 1: So first of all, thanks team, it was very helpful

517
00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:54,280
Speaker 1: to have your input on that. Yeah, so marking and

518
00:23:54,320 --> 00:23:57,439
Speaker 1: recapturing mosquitoes would be kind of nuts because they're so

519
00:23:57,560 --> 00:23:59,680
Speaker 1: small and so delicate that when you go to catch

520
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:03,119
Speaker 1: them and count them, unfortunate, well maybe not unfortunately, you

521
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:05,240
Speaker 1: usually kill them in the process of counting them. And

522
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:07,639
Speaker 1: so how could you mark a mosquito and release it?

523
00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:11,320
Speaker 1: And the answer is they usually don't. So when a

524
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:13,679
Speaker 1: lot of companies are trying, for example, to see how

525
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:16,000
Speaker 1: many mosquitos are out there, what they'll do essentially is

526
00:24:16,119 --> 00:24:18,919
Speaker 1: grow males in the lab and they'll throw out all

527
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:20,440
Speaker 1: of the females because you don't want to put any

528
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 1: extra mosquitos out there that will be biting anybody and

529
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 1: taking blood meals. But since the males don't take blood meals,

530
00:24:26,080 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 1: they hatch them out of eggs in the lab, and

531
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 1: then when they go to emerge to go from the

532
00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: water to their like air phase, they put a powder

533
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:38,119
Speaker 1: on the surface of the water and it's a fluorescent powder,

534
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: so as the mosquitoes emerge through it they get covered

535
00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 1: in this fluorescent dust.

536
00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:45,119
Speaker 4: Wow, and you get fabulous mosquitos.

537
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:46,960
Speaker 2: And you get fabulous mosquitos.

538
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: You can also genetically modify them so that they fluoresc

539
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:53,159
Speaker 1: green based on a protein that they're making themselves. But

540
00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:55,240
Speaker 1: one way or another, you're making it so that the

541
00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 1: animals that you've released into the wild are detectable in

542
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:01,560
Speaker 1: some way that it didn't require you to like handle them,

543
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 1: which could kill them. So now instead of doing mark

544
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:09,120
Speaker 1: and recapture, you mark in the lab and then when

545
00:25:09,119 --> 00:25:11,640
Speaker 1: you go out you can put, for example, a giant

546
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 1: tub with dry ice which releases CO two that attracts

547
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: the mosquitoes, and so you find a way to capture them.

548
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:21,119
Speaker 1: And then you look at the proportion of mosquitos that

549
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 1: you recapture that fluores when you look at them, and

550
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: you'll say, okay, those are the ones we added to

551
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 1: the environment from the lab. And then you compare that

552
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:31,479
Speaker 1: to the number that didn't fluoresse, which were the wild

553
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:34,040
Speaker 1: animals that you're catching for the first time. And this

554
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 1: process does kill them while you're doing the counting. Does

555
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:37,200
Speaker 1: that make sense?

556
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:39,919
Speaker 4: Yes, So if you attract and capture a bunch of

557
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 4: mosquitos and they're all your fluorescent ones. It suggests that

558
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:46,040
Speaker 4: your fluorescent ones are dominating the population. And if they

559
00:25:46,080 --> 00:25:48,439
Speaker 4: come back and you see almost none of your fluorescent ones,

560
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:50,840
Speaker 4: it means that there are a tiny fraction of the population.

561
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 4: So there's a bunch out there. Exactly what I wonder is, like,

562
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 4: how many other crazy ideas did they come up with

563
00:25:56,840 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 4: before this crazy idea that they made work. I love

564
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:04,400
Speaker 4: the experimental creativity of science this way, you know.

565
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 3: Like this is a hilarious idea, But I would really

566
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 3: love to see the whiteboard where they came up with

567
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 3: all sorts of bizarre ideas, including like you know, laser

568
00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 3: pointers or who knows what.

569
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:19,199
Speaker 1: There are some more complicated methods, so for example, you

570
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: can like look at how many batches of eggs appear

571
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 1: to have been laid in like some water that you

572
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 1: put out, and then you can try to extrapolate from

573
00:26:27,040 --> 00:26:29,560
Speaker 1: the batches of eggs how many females likely came by

574
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: to lay those eggs. And it's much more complicated and

575
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 1: there's a lot more guesswork because you have to like

576
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:38,400
Speaker 1: have an estimate for the average number of eggs laid

577
00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 1: by a female, for example. But yes, I think it

578
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: is a beautiful technique to release fluorescent mosquitoes who can't

579
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: bite you and then see how many of them you

580
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: get back.

581
00:26:47,359 --> 00:26:50,200
Speaker 4: And this is important because it's like a basic element

582
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 4: of mosquito science. It just like to know what are

583
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:56,359
Speaker 4: the populations and where are they, right, because without basic

584
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,199
Speaker 4: knowledge you can't do anything. But I think a lot

585
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:01,640
Speaker 4: of people underest to me, like how much work goes

586
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:05,119
Speaker 4: into just getting some basic information. Like we had our

587
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:08,159
Speaker 4: episode about weather, and like just knowing what is the

588
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 4: temperature everywhere on the Earth would be hugely helpful, and

589
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 4: we can't know that. We don't know that, and so

590
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 4: just like knowing where the mosquitoes are would be massively beneficial,

591
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:18,760
Speaker 4: I imagine.

592
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 2: Yeah.

593
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 13: And actually, I don't know if you guys have ever

594
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 13: talked about the citizen science projects that are the reason

595
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 13: we have information about insect population size. But for example,

596
00:27:28,800 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 13: many of us have noticed that our windshields are not

597
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:32,440
Speaker 13: covered in bugs when we go on a read trip

598
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:35,760
Speaker 13: these days, and that's because the insect populations have declined

599
00:27:35,800 --> 00:27:38,399
Speaker 13: so much. And there are citizen science projects where people

600
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:39,919
Speaker 13: will like put nets kind of like the one you

601
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,639
Speaker 13: described on the top of their cars and drive around

602
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 13: and just catch all the insects and count them. And

603
00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:47,680
Speaker 13: there were people that were doing that in Germany throughout

604
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:49,800
Speaker 13: the twentieth century, and that is a big part of

605
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:51,959
Speaker 13: why we know about the insect decline. Like if they

606
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 13: hadn't done that, we just wouldn't even know.

607
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:55,679
Speaker 2: Wow, I didn't know about that.

608
00:27:56,040 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you. Weird German insects capture people.

609
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 4: There are people out there who have enthusiasm for everything.

610
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 4: It's incredible. Yes, well, I need a break from all

611
00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 4: of these mosquitoes. I gotta go scratch some itches and

612
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 4: when we come back, we're going to talk more about

613
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 4: how mosquitoes do what they do and how we do

614
00:28:14,920 --> 00:28:19,160
Speaker 4: what we do best, which is kill mosquitoes. Wow.

615
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:21,639
Speaker 12: Thank you for those answers, Daniel and Kelly. What are

616
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 12: relief knowing that mosquitoes aren't able to coordinate their attacks?

617
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 12: Let's hope they do not evolve that ability anytime soon.

618
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:33,639
Speaker 12: Also so amazed that biologists have figured out a way

619
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 12: to estimate mosquito populations. Sorry, Kelly, I will never doubt

620
00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 12: biologists again. Let's get whoever came up with that idea

621
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 12: working on quantum gravity soon. Love the show. Thank you,

622
00:28:45,480 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 12: guys so much. Shout out to my Spring Street students.

623
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 4: Okay, we're back and I'm very excited for this segment

624
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 4: of the podcast where we get to take scientific revenge

625
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 4: on all the mosquitoes that have caused me to suffer

626
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 4: so much.

627
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:19,760
Speaker 1: All right, so we have this question from a listener, James,

628
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 1: and let's go ahead and listen to James's question.

629
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:24,600
Speaker 14: Hi, Daniel and Kelly, I was wondering if you could

630
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:27,479
Speaker 14: cover gene drives. It seems like this technology has been

631
00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 14: out for a long time but hasn't been deployed. It

632
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 14: seems like a magical technology for wiping out invasive species.

633
00:29:34,280 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 14: When you have invasive mosquitoes wiping out the last native

634
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 14: Hawaiian songbirds with av and malaria, you have to ask

635
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 14: why you wouldn't test this out on such isolated islands.

636
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 14: What terrifying scenarios are keeping them from deploying gene drives

637
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 14: in the outside world. Are those scenarios realistic or is

638
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 14: the pesticide industry just bumping off gene drive researchers.

639
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 1: Thanks, all right, So we have tried lots of things

640
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: to kill mosquitoes with varying success.

641
00:29:58,720 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 2: One of the things we tried.

642
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: Initially was spraying a bunch of insecticides, and that worked

643
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 1: for a while, but eventually the mosquitoes that happened to

644
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:10,600
Speaker 1: be resistant to the insecticides had a lot more babies.

645
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: And now we have populations of insecticide resistant mosquitos.

646
00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 4: How does that even possibly work? I mean, I see

647
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 4: like trucks driving around spraying insecticide, but I'm like, you know,

648
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 4: what fraction of the mosquitoes are they going to be

649
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:26,640
Speaker 4: hitting with that? It seems like, you know, shooting individual

650
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 4: pigeons in the park or something.

651
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: It's like hopeless, right, Yeah, And sometimes they release it airborne.

652
00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 1: Other times they'll specifically release insecticides into like waterways where

653
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: mosquitoes are breeding, and that's a little bit more targeted.

654
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: Either way, you're probably killing a bunch of stuff you

655
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 1: don't intend on killing as well, because a lot of

656
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,719
Speaker 1: these things are not specific just for mosquitoes.

657
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 4: And then aren't people going to end up drinking insecticide?

658
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, or breathing it in?

659
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: I remember whenever the insecticide trucks would come through in California,

660
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 1: I would run inside the house or I'd bring my

661
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: baby inside of the house. And yeah, so you breathe

662
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: it in presumably. I mean they try to make it

663
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 1: so that these chemicals are specifically focusing in on things

664
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: mosquitoes and other insects do and not things that happen

665
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 1: inside the human body. I don't know how well we're

666
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: often able to do that, Katrina, do you have any

667
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: insights there?

668
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 13: Yeah, oh, exactly, that's the idea, But I think that's

669
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 13: extremely hard. I mean, when it comes to viruses and microbes,

670
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:24,800
Speaker 13: it's easier to come up with targets that are totally

671
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 13: orthogonal to what would happen to a person, But that's

672
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 13: so much harder for insects.

673
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,320
Speaker 5: Like we're a little more closely related, believe it or not.

674
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 4: To insects than we are to microbes.

675
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, exactly, so it's harder to come up with

676
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 13: distinct targets.

677
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 5: But yeah, that's definitely the goal.

678
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 13: But I think there's all kinds of off target impacts.

679
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 13: Like I'm sure you guys remember hearing about the Peregon

680
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 13: falcons and the compromised egg structure that came from all

681
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 13: the insecticides being sprayed in the sixties.

682
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, the DDT. Yeah, I think Rachel Carson wrote

683
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: about that in silent spring. Yes, So we use these insecticides,

684
00:31:57,680 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 1: and we're trying to use them in a little bit

685
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 1: more specific ways. So, for example, you can dip a

686
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 1: bed net in insecticides, and then you can put the

687
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 1: bed net over your bed and then at the time

688
00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:09,480
Speaker 1: of day when mosquitos are most likely to bite, you're

689
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 1: protected inside of the bed net, and because it has

690
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 1: already soaked into the bed net, you're not breathing a

691
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: lot in or you're not drinking it in water. But

692
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:20,520
Speaker 1: the problem is that there's very strong selection pressure for

693
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 1: mosquitoes to find routes around this. So, for example, if

694
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 1: you've got mosquitos that bite at night, if there's variability

695
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:29,240
Speaker 1: and some mosquitoes are biting a little bit earlier in

696
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 1: the day, the ones that bite earlier in the day

697
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:34,920
Speaker 1: are going to catch the early birds and then they're

698
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 1: going to have a lot more babies that go early

699
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: in the day. And now the bed net isn't as helpful.

700
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: And we've actually been finding that in some parts of

701
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,479
Speaker 1: the world mosquitos are changing there the time of day

702
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: when they're most active, so that they are now going

703
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 1: after people when they're outside of the bed nets.

704
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 4: Wow, And this is why when I came back from

705
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 4: a trip to Tahiti where we had to sleep with

706
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,520
Speaker 4: bed nets every night, and I loved waking up without

707
00:32:57,520 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 4: any bites. I just set up the bed net on

708
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:02,040
Speaker 4: our couch and then for weeks, I just like, anytime

709
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,280
Speaker 4: I'm hanging on the couch, I'm under the mosquito net.

710
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 4: No big deal. I'm like impervious. I'm like laughing at

711
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 4: all the mosquitoes.

712
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:08,480
Speaker 2: Ha ha.

713
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 13: It was a very interesting sight, Daniel, Like watching TV

714
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 13: while sitting inside the bed net.

715
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 4: It's amazing, amazing because I don't feel any social pressure

716
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 4: to be bitten by mosquitos, so I don't look like

717
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 4: a weird under a bench. I was happy. It was great,

718
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 4: and now I know that ecologically I was, you know,

719
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:30,960
Speaker 4: suppressing mosquitos in a balanced way. So yeah, I was

720
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 4: being responsible.

721
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 2: Way to go, Daniel, Thank you, pat on the back.

722
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 4: All right, that's what I wanted. Thank you very much.

723
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:39,280
Speaker 1: So mosquitos essentially are constantly providing a moving target where

724
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: there's selection for them to route around whatever methods that

725
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 1: we are using to try to keep them at bay.

726
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: People also use things like they'll dump mosquitofish into waterways.

727
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: These are tiny little fish that eat the aquatic stages

728
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: of the mosquito.

729
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 4: My new favorite fish.

730
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, But then the problem is they also out compete

731
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:58,240
Speaker 1: a bunch of native fish, and they cause problems in

732
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 1: the ecosystems that you introduce them in because they're not

733
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 1: native there. So it's not a perfect method, but it's

734
00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 1: a method you can use in some areas at your

735
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:08,440
Speaker 1: own house. Now that you know that there's an aquatic stage.

736
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 1: Maybe you already knew that, but you can make sure

737
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:12,880
Speaker 1: that you dump any standing water and if you want to,

738
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: like have a bird bath, just dump it out every

739
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:17,399
Speaker 1: day or two and then refill it because that won't

740
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:20,600
Speaker 1: give the mosquitos time to hatch. But trying to like

741
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: up the complication level a little bit. The next thing

742
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: that we started in the nineteen fifties was using sterile

743
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:29,479
Speaker 1: insect technique, and folks might remember that we talked about

744
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 1: this a bit for the screwworm episode, and the idea here,

745
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 1: essentially is that you blast mosquitoes with gamma rays or

746
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: other chemicals that sterilize them, and then you release just

747
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:45,440
Speaker 1: the males into the environment. Female mosquitos mate once and

748
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:47,719
Speaker 1: they'll mate with one of these sterile males, and then

749
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:50,960
Speaker 1: if they're able to lay eggs, those eggs won't hatch,

750
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: And so essentially you are taking females out of the

751
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: population reproductively by having them mate with males where it

752
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:01,320
Speaker 1: won't result in successful offspring. But this method has a

753
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: couple problems. First of all, if you are just like

754
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:09,359
Speaker 1: randomly bombarding insects with gamma rays, yes you're gonna sterilize them,

755
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: but you also might beat them up in a bunch

756
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 1: of other ways. And so sometimes these males that you

757
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: release into the environment aren't as good at attracting the

758
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:20,319
Speaker 1: ladies as the wild males, because these males have all

759
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: sorts of other things wrong with them.

760
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:24,680
Speaker 4: Since Kelly, I read a bunch of comic books, and

761
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 4: if you blasphamilar with gamma rays, it usually gives it superpowers. Right, Yeah,

762
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:31,320
Speaker 4: are you telling me that particle physics isn't really connecting

763
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:32,880
Speaker 4: with the biology there? Is that what's happening?

764
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:35,360
Speaker 1: I think that's what's happening, Daniel. I'm really sorry. Or

765
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 1: maybe it's a statistical thing. Sometimes it works out that way.

766
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 1: But the mosquitos just they there hasn't been the Spider

767
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:42,319
Speaker 1: Man equivalent for mosquitoes yet.

768
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm glad that we haven't turned any of these

769
00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 4: mosquitoes into the incredible hulk mosquito. Yeah, that would be

770
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:49,120
Speaker 4: really excite to see that.

771
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:50,040
Speaker 2: It would be mad.

772
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:52,839
Speaker 5: Yeah, I bet the fabulous mosquitos do great though.

773
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 4: Yeah.

774
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 13: And actually I have a colleague at the City of

775
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:03,880
Speaker 13: Hawaii who's working on the microbiome. It's actually in the

776
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:06,799
Speaker 13: context of gene drives, but they are working on making

777
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 13: the microbiome of the mosquitos robust to help the mosquitos

778
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:13,840
Speaker 13: that they're engineering to go out there and succeed with

779
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:14,719
Speaker 13: the ladies.

780
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:14,919
Speaker 5: As it were.

781
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 2: Nice. Is this Wallbakia, No, it's mosquitos.

782
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 5: It's a malaria project.

783
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:22,320
Speaker 13: It's Nicole Hinson at the University of Hawaii by Walbakia.

784
00:36:22,360 --> 00:36:24,879
Speaker 1: I meant the bacteria that they're adding. But anyway, we'll

785
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:25,800
Speaker 1: get back to Wallbachia.

786
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:28,880
Speaker 13: So no, I think that they are like more roundly

787
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:31,839
Speaker 13: making the microbiome of the mosquito robust, so that in

788
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 13: general the mosquito is robust.

789
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,799
Speaker 4: I'm not sure, but again with this method, I wonder, like,

790
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 4: how many males do you have to put out there

791
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:40,799
Speaker 4: to have this have any efficacy. It's not like the

792
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:43,600
Speaker 4: males are reproducing and making more of themselves, right, so

793
00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:45,840
Speaker 4: like every one you put out, it's one that you

794
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 4: essentially manufactured. Is it really possible to have an impact

795
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:49,760
Speaker 4: on the population.

796
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. So there was an experiment done in Havana, Cuba.

797
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 1: Sorry I said that wrong, but that's what we expect

798
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: out of me. Where about one and a quarter million

799
00:36:59,840 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 1: or radiated mosquitos in this case, the species was eighties

800
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:07,000
Speaker 1: jipdi were released and again all males, and they did

801
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 1: a twenty week trial and they looked at a fifty

802
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:12,040
Speaker 1: hectare area, so a pretty big area, and they put

803
00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:14,919
Speaker 1: out what they called ovtraps, essentially just like areas where

804
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 1: mosquitoes could lay eggs, and they didn't find any eggs

805
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,880
Speaker 1: in that fifty hectar area, suggesting that one in a

806
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,640
Speaker 1: quarter million mosquitoes, which is a lot of mosquitoes, is

807
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:27,680
Speaker 1: enough to essentially knock a population down in an area.

808
00:37:27,719 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 1: But the problem is you got to keep doing that

809
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 1: over and over and over again every year. So it's

810
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:35,799
Speaker 1: an expensive process that needs to be maintained. But it

811
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: turns out it doesn't work well for anophlies mosquitos. So

812
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 1: we talked about eighties mosquitoes. There's another genus of mosquitos

813
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:44,759
Speaker 1: called Anophlies that also tends to have a lot of

814
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 1: species that transmit diseases to us, and that species it

815
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:50,840
Speaker 1: looks like it's a little bit harder at the early

816
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:52,880
Speaker 1: stages of their life to figure out which ones are

817
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 1: males and which ones are females. And if you can't

818
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,320
Speaker 1: be sure, then maybe you're releasing a bunch of extra

819
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:00,879
Speaker 1: females into the environment who are like go and start

820
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:05,400
Speaker 1: biting people and possibly transmit diseases. So it works okay

821
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: for eighties a jipdi if you're willing to release it

822
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: over and over again over a large area, But it

823
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: works less well for an off lease because there's this

824
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: step where you need to figure out if there are

825
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 1: boy mosquitos or girl mosquitos, and because that's hard to

826
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:18,759
Speaker 1: do in the lab, that makes this technique a little

827
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 1: harder to use. So next, let's talk about bacteria. So

828
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 1: I suspect to have Katrina's attention. So Wolbakia is a

829
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: gram negative bacteria that's carried by a bunch of different

830
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: kinds of insects. It lives inside of insects cells and

831
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: it only passes down the female line, and so it's

832
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: found ways to manipulate a lot of different insects species

833
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: to help it transmit from one generation to another. So

834
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:50,719
Speaker 1: if a male who has the bacteria mates with the

835
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:54,760
Speaker 1: female who doesn't, the eggs that she produces won't hatch.

836
00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:58,600
Speaker 1: But if the female has Wolbachia and the male doesn't,

837
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 1: then she will lay as that all carry Woolbachia. And

838
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:04,680
Speaker 1: so essentially the bacteria has a way of sort of

839
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 1: manipulating things so that eggs are produced in ways where

840
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:12,279
Speaker 1: the bacteria can transmit and in instances where the bacteria

841
00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:14,360
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to transmit. It just sort of like

842
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: stops reproduction dead, so that there's a line there where

843
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:20,719
Speaker 1: nothing's happening. So in this way it can permeate the

844
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 1: entire population.

845
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:24,879
Speaker 4: That's mind boggling. The sort of like genetic engineering by

846
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 4: the bacteria to ensure that only lines that have the

847
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:30,239
Speaker 4: bacteria continue, that's incredible.

848
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,359
Speaker 13: It is incredible. Yeah, I remember when I first learned

849
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:35,440
Speaker 13: about this. It's kind of like blood types or something

850
00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 13: that there's like this incompatibility. But I know it's given

851
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 13: people a real handle for engineering the populations. So I

852
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:44,920
Speaker 13: can only imagine what you're going to say next.

853
00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:47,600
Speaker 1: So what I'm going to say next is that Scott

854
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 1: O'Neill at Monash University noted that a different lab had

855
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: found that viruses and fruit flies have trouble growing when

856
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: they're infected by wolbachia.

857
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:00,360
Speaker 2: So this has nothing to do with REP production.

858
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:03,000
Speaker 1: This is just if wolbachia is there, it prevents the

859
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:05,760
Speaker 1: growth of viruses that otherwise would have killed the fruit flies.

860
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,040
Speaker 1: So O'Neil was like, well, what if we take wolbachia

861
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,840
Speaker 1: out of fruit flies and put it in mosquito eggs

862
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:17,640
Speaker 1: and then see if mosquitoes carrying this wolbachia are less

863
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 1: likely to transmit dengae, which is another yeah, mosquito transmitted

864
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 1: disease that can be lethal. And so essentially they did

865
00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 1: the incredibly difficult job of extracting a teeny tiny bacteria

866
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:32,280
Speaker 1: from a fruit fly sticking it into a teeny tiny

867
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:34,360
Speaker 1: little mosquito egg. Apparently they had to do this like

868
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:37,759
Speaker 1: thousands of times before it worked, but they eventually were

869
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: able to get a strain of mosquitoes that were infected

870
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: by the wolbachia that was found in these fruit flies.

871
00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 4: So you're telling me that they found a strain of

872
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 4: Wolbachia that kills viruses, and since dangay is a virus,

873
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 4: they were like, maybe this strain of Wolbachia is going

874
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:56,440
Speaker 4: to also kill dngay. That's crazy.

875
00:40:56,800 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily kill the virus.

876
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:01,200
Speaker 1: But it makes it so the virus can't reproduce, and

877
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 1: if the virus can't reproduce, it can't go from mosquito

878
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:06,560
Speaker 1: to mosquito. And so they did some lab experiments and

879
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 1: it was working well in the lab. And in fact,

880
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 1: one of our listeners, Joe, sent us an email that

881
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: included a link to an article where Wobakia infected mosquitoes

882
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 1: had been released in Florida. So we're trying this like

883
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:20,760
Speaker 1: out in the wild.

884
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:21,359
Speaker 4: Wow.

885
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:23,680
Speaker 1: And so the question is does it work? And I

886
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:26,359
Speaker 1: looked for a really long time to try to find

887
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:29,399
Speaker 1: studies that had quantified this working, and I was able

888
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: to find one study and it was in Indonesia and

889
00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 1: they released Wolbachia infected mosquitoes and it reduced the spread

890
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:38,440
Speaker 1: of dengay by seventy seven percent.

891
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 4: Wow.

892
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:41,799
Speaker 1: So not one hundred percent, but like, man, those are

893
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:44,800
Speaker 1: much better odds. I'd take those odds. But then I

894
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: found a twenty twenty four review paper that was trying

895
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:52,799
Speaker 1: to aggregate all of the Wobakia infected mosquito results, and

896
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:55,160
Speaker 1: they reported that essentially the only paper they were able

897
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:57,759
Speaker 1: to find was this paper from Indonesia. There were two

898
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:01,319
Speaker 1: other ongoing studies collecting data, but they hadn't published results yet.

899
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:03,400
Speaker 1: And so I would say at this point that this

900
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:06,359
Speaker 1: is super promising. I'd like to see evidence that it's

901
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,400
Speaker 1: working in some other areas before I could say like, ah, we.

902
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 2: This is this might be the key.

903
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 1: But for dengay, there's some preliminary evidence that this method

904
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:16,719
Speaker 1: is promising.

905
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 4: Well, I'm a big fan of anything that's anti mosquito,

906
00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:22,839
Speaker 4: and I'm a big fan of preventing dengay or other

907
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 4: kinds of diseases, but the idea of like intentionally infecting

908
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 4: mosquitoes with some kind of bacteria seems dangerous, like kind

909
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:32,320
Speaker 4: of I know this thing is going to like mutate

910
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:34,280
Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden it's some new horrible

911
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:35,760
Speaker 4: face melting disease or something.

912
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:40,240
Speaker 1: So you know, this bacteria is pretty widespread in nature,

913
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: so it's not like we're introducing something super weird into

914
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:47,719
Speaker 1: the environment, but it is a different strain. I don't know,

915
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 1: bacteria expert.

916
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 15: What do you think, Katrina, Well, I guess I was

917
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:54,080
Speaker 15: just going to say that this Wolbakia bacteria, I think

918
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:56,960
Speaker 15: it's present in like forty percent of insects, and so

919
00:42:57,120 --> 00:43:00,040
Speaker 15: of course there's going to be very individual relationships that

920
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 15: each bacteria has with its own insect.

921
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 13: But I don't know of the things that humans do

922
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 13: to manipulate the environment, this seems like a relatively innocuous one.

923
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 5: I think it's really cool.

924
00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:12,160
Speaker 13: It's like not so toxic to just kind of scramble

925
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 13: things around a little and hope for a better outcome.

926
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 4: All right, Well, if people's faces get melted, it's on you.

927
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 1: Oh no, well I think it's on Oxytech, which is

928
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 1: a company that is releasing some of these mosquitoes. I

929
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 1: don't know that we can blame Katrina, she didn't release them.

930
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 16: But thank you for looking up for me. Kelly, Yeah,

931
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:35,320
Speaker 16: you're welcome. I like when we can team up against

932
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:37,760
Speaker 16: Daniel so well.

933
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 4: You know, then maybe I need you to chime in

934
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 4: on a topic that's been discussed heatedly at the Whites

935
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 4: and Institute board meetings recently, really, which is you know

936
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 4: what is the source of all the mosquitoes at the

937
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:52,200
Speaker 4: Whites and is too compound that are biting Daniel. And

938
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:55,759
Speaker 4: for example, I'm against having sources of fresh water near

939
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:59,240
Speaker 4: the house, but Katrina is growing vegetables hydroponically in our backyard.

940
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:02,320
Speaker 4: H what do you think, Kelly, I need a ruling.

941
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:06,359
Speaker 13: There's no way for a mosquito to get into this

942
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 13: hydroponic growth chamber or for a mosquito to get out,

943
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 13: so I just really don't think it's possible for them

944
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 13: to be in there. But there is sometimes like a

945
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 13: bowl of water that collects from rain that I don't notice,

946
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:20,720
Speaker 13: and I'm sorry if that caused any mosquito growing to happen.

947
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm hearing all of your fancy engineering explanations

948
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,400
Speaker 4: for why this can't happen, but I'm taking measurements of

949
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 4: mosquito bites and I'm telling you it's high.

950
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 13: It feels like there's been a lot of mosquitoes lately.

951
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 13: But I thought we could blame that shipping container of

952
00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 13: the Port of Long Beach. Isn't that why?

953
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 4: Well, what do you think, Kelly?

954
00:44:38,440 --> 00:44:41,279
Speaker 1: I think that I like every opportunity that I can

955
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:45,680
Speaker 1: have to side with Katrina, But I don't really want

956
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:47,360
Speaker 1: to get in the middle of a marital spat, so

957
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 1: I'm going to run away and call a commercial break

958
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:51,319
Speaker 1: and pretend none of this happened.

959
00:44:51,360 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 2: When we get back, and we're back and we are talking.

960
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 1: About genetic engineering techniques for controlling mosquito populations. This time around,

961
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: we're about to get to gene drives, which was the

962
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:24,879
Speaker 1: listener's question. This is the most roundabout way of getting there.

963
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,520
Speaker 1: But first let's talk about some genetic engineering where essentially

964
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:30,920
Speaker 1: you take males and you make it so that if

965
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:34,759
Speaker 1: they don't encounter tetracycline, they will die.

966
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:35,919
Speaker 4: What is tetracycline.

967
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:39,520
Speaker 1: Tetracycline is an antibiotic, and essentially you make it so

968
00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 1: that the males are making a protein that when it's

969
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:47,319
Speaker 1: made it messes up the cells activity. But in the

970
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:51,720
Speaker 1: presence of tetracycline, that protein is suppressed so it doesn't

971
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: get made. So males in the lab are given tetracycline,

972
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:58,280
Speaker 1: they act normal, but when they produce suns in the wild,

973
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,640
Speaker 1: the suns start producing this protein like crazy. It messes

974
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: up their cell activity and they die. And so the

975
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:07,280
Speaker 1: females do lay eggs but their eggs don't tend to survive.

976
00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:10,560
Speaker 4: So you genetically engineer mosquitos to be dependent on this

977
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:12,680
Speaker 4: thing that you can give them. So when they go

978
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:15,440
Speaker 4: out there in the wild, their bodies are making this

979
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:18,960
Speaker 4: protein and since they don't have this magic powder, they

980
00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 4: end up killing themselves.

981
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:21,319
Speaker 2: They end up dying. Yeah.

982
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:21,560
Speaker 4: Wow.

983
00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 1: These are pretty complicated strategies, and they also are strategies

984
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 1: that tend to make a lot of people uncomfortable. So,

985
00:46:28,680 --> 00:46:32,480
Speaker 1: for example, this has been tried in the Cayman Islands, Panama, Brazil,

986
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 1: and Florida, and in the Florida Keys, for example, the

987
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:40,120
Speaker 1: initial response was like massive backlash against the release of

988
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 1: these GMO mosquitoes. They ended up getting released anyway, but

989
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:45,720
Speaker 1: there were people who were saying like, I'm gonna find

990
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 1: the boxes where there's these mosquitos are supposed to hatch from,

991
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:51,399
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna dump them out or pour bleach in them.

992
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:54,279
Speaker 1: And I think in general it's really important that you

993
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: have public buy in for these sorts of things, because

994
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: otherwise you just get you know, you get people who

995
00:46:59,160 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: are justifiably upset. They don't understand what's being released. They're

996
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:04,560
Speaker 1: worried that the genes that got put in the mosquitoes

997
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 1: might jump into them.

998
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 4: Is that what the concern is that the that they're

999
00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 4: going to end up depending on tetracyclin also or is

1000
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:14,440
Speaker 4: it just a generic like I'm scared of GMO stuff.

1001
00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:16,319
Speaker 1: I think it's more of a generic. I'm scared of

1002
00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: GMO stuff. You know, folks don't want GMO foods. I

1003
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 1: think they don't necessarily like the idea of getting bitten

1004
00:47:21,040 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: by GMO mosquitos.

1005
00:47:22,600 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 13: I think they also don't like the idea of putting

1006
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 13: an engineered gene out in the environment and not knowing

1007
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 13: where it's going to end. So like these island capture experiments,

1008
00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:34,880
Speaker 13: where of course the idea is that it's an island

1009
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:38,759
Speaker 13: so it's somewhat contained, are still unsettling because the world

1010
00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:40,799
Speaker 13: is so connected right now, so it's hard to know

1011
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 13: what the reach of an experiment like that.

1012
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 2: Will be exactly.

1013
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:47,319
Speaker 1: And so while these releases do first have to go

1014
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:51,560
Speaker 1: through like a complicated series of approvals through groups like

1015
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 1: the Food and Drug Administration, the United States Department of Agriculture,

1016
00:47:56,160 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 1: the Environmental Protection Agency, it is still the first time

1017
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:03,439
Speaker 1: we're doing something like this, and so ox Tech did

1018
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: release mosquitos that had this tetracycling thing happening, and some

1019
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:12,360
Speaker 1: of the genes from the mosquitoes did end up being

1020
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:15,800
Speaker 1: found in wild mosquito, so like those genes had escaped

1021
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:19,239
Speaker 1: into the population. There were some headlines at the time

1022
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:21,960
Speaker 1: that sort of were way overblown. They said things like,

1023
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 1: these genes are going to make the wild mosquitoes even

1024
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:27,319
Speaker 1: better at biting us, and now we've just made our

1025
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:30,759
Speaker 1: problem worse. There wasn't necessarily any evidence for that, but

1026
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:34,319
Speaker 1: there was evidence that genes that were essentially manufactured in

1027
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:37,160
Speaker 1: a lab are now part of the wild population and

1028
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:40,359
Speaker 1: might be there forever. And we don't really understand if

1029
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:42,319
Speaker 1: that is going to do anything at all.

1030
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 4: I understand the concern that these genes that you've put

1031
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 4: into one mosquito might end up in a wild mosquito,

1032
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 4: and you don't know exactly what's going to happen. Maybe

1033
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 4: it turns them into incredible hulk mosquitos, whatever. But how

1034
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 4: does a gene go from that mosquito to the wild mosquitos.

1035
00:48:56,040 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 4: Does it have to breed with those mosquitoes or is

1036
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:00,440
Speaker 4: there some other weird horizontal thing happening.

1037
00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: So I think what happened in this case is that

1038
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 1: one of the mosquito babies that was supposed to die

1039
00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:08,840
Speaker 1: did not, and so it survived, had some of the

1040
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:12,239
Speaker 1: genes that it got from its genetically engineered dad, and

1041
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:14,920
Speaker 1: then is passing that through the generation.

1042
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 4: Okay, so it's through breeding.

1043
00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:19,520
Speaker 13: Yeah, you could imagine some compensation that allowed it to

1044
00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:24,360
Speaker 13: survive with that toxic protein, and then the toxic protein

1045
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:27,440
Speaker 13: would stick in the population. I mean, I guess in

1046
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 13: my mind, there's so much evolution and transfer of genetic

1047
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:34,920
Speaker 13: material all the time that any tiny little drop that

1048
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:38,440
Speaker 13: comes from a lab feels insignificant to me. But I

1049
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 13: do understand why it feels unsettling.

1050
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 1: That's my gut feeling. Also, like horizontal gene transfer happens

1051
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:47,200
Speaker 1: between insects and our food, and just all sorts of

1052
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:50,359
Speaker 1: different transfers are happening all the time in nature. I'm

1053
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 1: less worried about a genetic sequence that seems pretty benign

1054
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 1: getting out into the wild. But on the other hand,

1055
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,720
Speaker 1: I'm somebody who is totally fine eating genetically modified foods.

1056
00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:02,839
Speaker 1: But I understand that that's not true for everybody, and

1057
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:05,080
Speaker 1: so I can understand why this would be upsetting to

1058
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:05,960
Speaker 1: some people.

1059
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:09,320
Speaker 4: I think generally, you know, biologists don't know how everything works,

1060
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:12,040
Speaker 4: and we're pushing buttons and pulling levers on a big,

1061
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 4: complicated machine, and it does feel like one little button

1062
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:17,960
Speaker 4: on a huge machine. But you know, you release the

1063
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:21,080
Speaker 4: right pathogen and it can definitely have a big impact

1064
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:21,760
Speaker 4: on a population.

1065
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:23,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's important to be humble.

1066
00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:26,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's get to gene drives, which is probably

1067
00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:28,880
Speaker 1: the most like ethically controversial thing that we'll be talking

1068
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 1: about today. And you know, we bring Katrina on the

1069
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:35,920
Speaker 1: show because we generally love Katrina's input, but she also

1070
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:38,640
Speaker 1: understands gene drives. And I spent a day smashing my

1071
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:42,320
Speaker 1: head against a paper I could not understand. And so Katrina,

1072
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:44,360
Speaker 1: could you explain gene drives for us, please?

1073
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 13: So, a gene drive refers to when you use genetic

1074
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 13: engineering to force a gene through a population at a

1075
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:56,760
Speaker 13: really high rate. So normally our genes are inherited approximately

1076
00:50:56,800 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 13: fifty to fifty, so the chances of inheriting a pertinent

1077
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:04,400
Speaker 13: trait are not weighted in one direction or another. What

1078
00:51:04,440 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 13: a gene drive does is it ensures or drives that

1079
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 13: a particular trait will be more frequent in the population

1080
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:14,360
Speaker 13: and so, and we've actually been using this technique in

1081
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:17,760
Speaker 13: the context of mosquitos with a few different strategies in mind.

1082
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:20,719
Speaker 13: This it could be something that affects fertility, so then

1083
00:51:20,760 --> 00:51:24,399
Speaker 13: you drive the population to extinction, So that would lead

1084
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:27,799
Speaker 13: to you know, fewer mosquitos is the goal there. But

1085
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 13: then there's also strategies where you try to prevent the

1086
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 13: mosquitoes from spreading malaria. So there's some mosquitos that are

1087
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:38,640
Speaker 13: naturally resistant to carrying the malaria parasite, and so spreading

1088
00:51:38,640 --> 00:51:41,440
Speaker 13: that strategy is another gene drive technique.

1089
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:43,680
Speaker 4: So can we dig a bit deeper, Like I understand

1090
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:46,600
Speaker 4: sort of the basics of genetics at the sort of

1091
00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:50,080
Speaker 4: pea pod level, you know from Gregor Mendel, and you

1092
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:52,359
Speaker 4: have a fifty percent chance of getting the gene from

1093
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:54,879
Speaker 4: one parent or from the other. How does the gene

1094
00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 4: drive affect which genes you're going to end up with?

1095
00:51:58,000 --> 00:52:00,799
Speaker 13: Well, okay, the one really cool strategy that people use

1096
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:05,240
Speaker 13: to make gene drives work is to borrow the phage

1097
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 13: defense system called Crisper cast nine. As you guys hopefully

1098
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 13: know all about, there are these viruses called phages that

1099
00:52:12,080 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 13: can infect bacteria and the bacteria defund themselves in all

1100
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 13: kinds of interesting ways, and one of them has been

1101
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,520
Speaker 13: co opted for all kinds of genetic engineering. It's called

1102
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:27,480
Speaker 13: Crisper cast nine, and it turns out whenever the phage

1103
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:31,960
Speaker 13: infect the bacteria, the bacteria keep a little record of

1104
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:35,240
Speaker 13: little snippets of the genes that the phage was trying

1105
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:38,360
Speaker 13: to infect the bacteria with. And then they put a

1106
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:41,320
Speaker 13: little pair of scissors, a gene that can chop DNA

1107
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:44,040
Speaker 13: up next to the little memory bank of all the

1108
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:47,319
Speaker 13: little phage genes that were left behind. And then when

1109
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 13: the phage tries to infect the scissors, the gene that

1110
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 13: has the DNA cutting enzyme on it will match up

1111
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:57,879
Speaker 13: with the pieces of the phage gene and it'll chop

1112
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:00,600
Speaker 13: up the phage as it tries to enter. The Nobel

1113
00:53:00,600 --> 00:53:05,880
Speaker 13: Prize last year to Jennifer Dawna and Manuel Sharpentier because

1114
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:09,520
Speaker 13: they had the idea of taking this tool and using

1115
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 13: it to engineer genes in any system.

1116
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:15,080
Speaker 4: So, just to back up and make sure we're understanding,

1117
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,760
Speaker 4: the Crisper idea is some sort of like bacterial immune

1118
00:53:18,760 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 4: system where it remembers the viruses it's seen before and

1119
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:25,080
Speaker 4: has a bunch of guys floating around which will recognize

1120
00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:27,759
Speaker 4: those viruses. Plus it comes with scissors so that when

1121
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 4: the viruses come near, it latches on and then it

1122
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:32,880
Speaker 4: chops them up and then the viruses can't infect the

1123
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 4: bacteria anymore. So the basics of how the Crisper system works, yeah.

1124
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:39,200
Speaker 5: That is exactly the basics.

1125
00:53:39,719 --> 00:53:42,799
Speaker 13: But the idea of using it as a tool is

1126
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:46,520
Speaker 13: really cool because basically, now you have a system that

1127
00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:50,120
Speaker 13: can go and find a particular DNA sequence and then

1128
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:51,960
Speaker 13: it's got scissors right next to it, so it can

1129
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:56,239
Speaker 13: go cleanly chop things out exactly next to whatever sequence is.

1130
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:56,759
Speaker 5: Next to it.

1131
00:53:57,200 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 13: So with the phases, the bacteria using it to chop

1132
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:03,480
Speaker 13: up phages. But now imagine you wanted to go in

1133
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 13: there and slice and dice a mutation that was causing

1134
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:07,080
Speaker 13: sickle cell anemia.

1135
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:08,359
Speaker 5: You can do that.

1136
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 13: That actually is happening in people right now, which is amazing.

1137
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:15,760
Speaker 13: So people with sickle selenemia now can have some access

1138
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:20,040
Speaker 13: to Crisper CAST nine genetic engineering technology where you use

1139
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,080
Speaker 13: the same scissors, but this time you match it to

1140
00:54:22,120 --> 00:54:25,040
Speaker 13: the gene causing the sickle cell disease and you have

1141
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 13: the scissors go in there and snip out the problematic

1142
00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:32,120
Speaker 13: gene and replace it with a healthy gene. And I mean,

1143
00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:35,800
Speaker 13: that's to me amazing that that is actually working in people.

1144
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:39,280
Speaker 13: The idea is not that old. I mean the discovery

1145
00:54:39,320 --> 00:54:42,759
Speaker 13: is somewhat recent. And so that's the same strategy that's

1146
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 13: been used to build mosquito gene drives.

1147
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:50,120
Speaker 4: So I understand how Crisper can let you edit your genes,

1148
00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:52,880
Speaker 4: which on one hand sounds like why is that are

1149
00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 4: you know, you just like go in and edit the data.

1150
00:54:55,120 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 4: But like this data stored on DNA, you can't just

1151
00:54:57,680 --> 00:54:59,480
Speaker 4: go in there and like manipulate it with tweezers. You

1152
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:03,319
Speaker 4: need some of like microscopic manipulation tools, and that's what

1153
00:55:03,400 --> 00:55:05,800
Speaker 4: Crisper is giving you. But how does that connect to

1154
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:09,240
Speaker 4: gene drives. How does Crisper let you enhance which genes

1155
00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:10,600
Speaker 4: get passed down in the population.

1156
00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:15,520
Speaker 13: Well, you engineer mosquitos that contain a Crisper cast nine

1157
00:55:15,600 --> 00:55:19,279
Speaker 13: gene set in there. And so you could put the

1158
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:23,160
Speaker 13: scissors right next to a gene that's important for fertility,

1159
00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:25,799
Speaker 13: or you could put the scissors right next to a

1160
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:29,680
Speaker 13: gene that controls whether the mosquito is able to be

1161
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:34,239
Speaker 13: infected by the malaria parasite, and so if you put

1162
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:38,000
Speaker 13: that in there, then the crisper cast nine scissors will

1163
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 13: go around spreading that gene even after the mosquito is born,

1164
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:47,279
Speaker 13: so it's throughout the mosquito's life the gene drive will

1165
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 13: be active and it will continue to spread that gene.

1166
00:55:51,080 --> 00:55:55,320
Speaker 13: So your opportunity for picking up your genetic traits will

1167
00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:58,799
Speaker 13: not end right at the moment of Mendelian inheritance.

1168
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:01,359
Speaker 5: The gene drive will can continued to be active after.

1169
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 4: Oh, in the same way that you go in and

1170
00:56:04,320 --> 00:56:07,600
Speaker 4: edit somebody's genes when they're alive to remove the bit

1171
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:11,520
Speaker 4: that's giving them some condition, you're basically giving these mosquitoes

1172
00:56:11,719 --> 00:56:14,759
Speaker 4: a little bit of genetic engineering during their whole lifetime,

1173
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 4: so it's not just what they inherit. You're like changing

1174
00:56:17,560 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 4: them after the fact. That's cool.

1175
00:56:19,719 --> 00:56:22,359
Speaker 13: Yeah, So basically, if that gene drive is in there,

1176
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:25,759
Speaker 13: every time the little cassette that has the scissors on

1177
00:56:25,800 --> 00:56:29,360
Speaker 13: it encounters the gene that it can match to, it

1178
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:33,239
Speaker 13: will swap things around, so you can. Like one of

1179
00:56:33,239 --> 00:56:35,480
Speaker 13: the examples that I really loved that I read about

1180
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:39,640
Speaker 13: was where they had a naturally malaria or resistant mosquito,

1181
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:42,600
Speaker 13: and it was just caused by one snip and a gene,

1182
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:46,279
Speaker 13: a single mutation, and they made a gene drive that

1183
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:50,239
Speaker 13: forced that mutation through the population. But it's it's a

1184
00:56:50,320 --> 00:56:55,479
Speaker 13: naturally existing gene, so they're not making a Frankenstein mosquito here,

1185
00:56:56,000 --> 00:57:00,319
Speaker 13: and it made it so that the malaria infectivity rate

1186
00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:02,239
Speaker 13: of the mosquito population could go down.

1187
00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:04,360
Speaker 1: I found another paper where they were tinkering with the

1188
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:07,840
Speaker 1: gene that they called double sex, and essentially what happened

1189
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:10,200
Speaker 1: is they made sure, you know that everybody got two

1190
00:57:10,320 --> 00:57:13,360
Speaker 1: versions of double sex, and if you're a female that

1191
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:16,960
Speaker 1: has the double sex genes, you are sterile and you

1192
00:57:17,080 --> 00:57:20,080
Speaker 1: also look a little bit male like. But males who

1193
00:57:20,120 --> 00:57:22,560
Speaker 1: get it are normal and they can go on spreading

1194
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:25,960
Speaker 1: the gene drive. So essentially every baby that's produced that's

1195
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:28,360
Speaker 1: a female is not going to make any more babies,

1196
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:30,640
Speaker 1: and males that are produced are going to be able

1197
00:57:30,640 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 1: to go on in mate, but they're going to pass

1198
00:57:33,040 --> 00:57:37,640
Speaker 1: this gene drive onto their offspring, and so they'll create

1199
00:57:37,720 --> 00:57:40,480
Speaker 1: female babies that die and male babies that go off

1200
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 1: and continue to pass the gene drive until it gets

1201
00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:46,760
Speaker 1: through essentially the entire population. I think is the goal. Wow,

1202
00:57:46,800 --> 00:57:51,320
Speaker 1: well yeah, and so this has not yet been released

1203
00:57:51,360 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 1: into the environment, and so, as Katrina noted, there's two

1204
00:57:54,640 --> 00:57:57,280
Speaker 1: different methods. You could try to either kill the mosquitoes directly,

1205
00:57:57,400 --> 00:57:59,080
Speaker 1: or you could do something to the mosquito so they

1206
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:01,600
Speaker 1: can't transmit the dizzy anymore. There might be some other

1207
00:58:01,640 --> 00:58:03,240
Speaker 1: options too, but those are the two things that people

1208
00:58:03,240 --> 00:58:06,280
Speaker 1: are working on right now. But this, I think this

1209
00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:11,480
Speaker 1: technique in particular, is a little scarier ecologically because you know, like,

1210
00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:14,880
Speaker 1: what if that gene drive jumps to I don't know,

1211
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:19,800
Speaker 1: another mosquito species. Maybe having two mosquito species eradicated doesn't

1212
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:22,880
Speaker 1: sound so bad, but what if somehow that gene drive

1213
00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:26,080
Speaker 1: is able to jump to I don't know, a ladybug

1214
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 1: that helps control pests in agriculture or something. And now

1215
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 1: we've got this thing that could lead to extinction, and

1216
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:35,240
Speaker 1: there's some concern that if you release it, you know,

1217
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:36,360
Speaker 1: where is it going to end up?

1218
00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 4: But how do these jumps happen? Earlier we were saying

1219
00:58:39,280 --> 00:58:42,800
Speaker 4: that the genetic engineering that you manufacturing your mosquitos can

1220
00:58:42,840 --> 00:58:46,000
Speaker 4: spread to wild mosquitoes through inheritance, But we're not having

1221
00:58:46,040 --> 00:58:50,080
Speaker 4: mosquitoes like having babies with ladybugs. How does that jump possible?

1222
00:58:50,200 --> 00:58:52,000
Speaker 1: So, as we're going to talk about in a future episode,

1223
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:55,680
Speaker 1: the definition of a species isn't always entirely crisp. Sometimes

1224
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:58,200
Speaker 1: you can get you know, individuals that are in the

1225
00:58:58,200 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 1: same genus, for example, mating with each I don't know

1226
00:59:00,680 --> 00:59:03,919
Speaker 1: if they get confused or they have very particular interests

1227
00:59:04,320 --> 00:59:05,800
Speaker 1: something they're looking for in a partner.

1228
00:59:05,920 --> 00:59:08,400
Speaker 2: No judge, but no judgment, no judgment.

1229
00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:12,080
Speaker 1: But if you know the mosquito species, you put the

1230
00:59:12,080 --> 00:59:15,480
Speaker 1: gene drive in mates with another mosquito species. Now you're

1231
00:59:15,520 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: wiping out that species too.

1232
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:17,960
Speaker 2: And you can.

1233
00:59:17,840 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 1: Imagine yourself jumping around the tree of life and whenever

1234
00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:25,200
Speaker 1: you get some you know, cross species mating, you've now

1235
00:59:25,240 --> 00:59:26,800
Speaker 1: got that species wiped out too.

1236
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:29,680
Speaker 4: So crisper can move because species aren't crisp, is what

1237
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:30,240
Speaker 4: you're telling me.

1238
00:59:30,440 --> 00:59:34,040
Speaker 5: Ah, that's right, I mean, yeah, that's definitely.

1239
00:59:34,040 --> 00:59:37,920
Speaker 13: One way is through mating partners that might be a

1240
00:59:37,920 --> 00:59:41,600
Speaker 13: little bit less related. But I mean another big strategy

1241
00:59:41,880 --> 00:59:45,800
Speaker 13: is sometimes there are big leaps in genes that get

1242
00:59:45,840 --> 00:59:48,960
Speaker 13: transferred across the tree of life, and that often is

1243
00:59:49,080 --> 00:59:53,520
Speaker 13: facilitated by viruses. So, for example, eight percent of the

1244
00:59:53,600 --> 00:59:57,240
Speaker 13: human genome is in the form of endogenous retroviruses. So

1245
00:59:57,280 --> 01:00:01,560
Speaker 13: that means that one of our long ago ancestors had

1246
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 13: a virus infect one of their germline cells, one of

1247
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:07,240
Speaker 13: their sex cells, and we have inherited that to the

1248
01:00:07,280 --> 01:00:10,080
Speaker 13: tune of literally eight percent of our genome. Most of

1249
01:00:10,120 --> 01:00:12,840
Speaker 13: them are pretty dormant and haven't really affected us that much,

1250
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:15,480
Speaker 13: but some of them have led to the biggest innovations

1251
01:00:15,480 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 13: in biology. So like, for example, did you guys know

1252
01:00:19,240 --> 01:00:23,120
Speaker 13: that the gene that led to the placenta evolving came

1253
01:00:23,120 --> 01:00:27,280
Speaker 13: from a virus? So an endogenous retrovirus that infected one

1254
01:00:27,280 --> 01:00:32,880
Speaker 13: of our ancestors back before mammals existed, had a gene

1255
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 13: in it that helps with membrane fusion. So like that

1256
01:00:36,600 --> 01:00:38,919
Speaker 13: gene in a virus is great for helping the cell

1257
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:42,840
Speaker 13: membrane fusee but in a mammal it allows for the

1258
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:45,880
Speaker 13: fusion between the uterus and the placenta cool, so those

1259
01:00:45,960 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 13: kind of jumps can happen. And to me, that's a

1260
01:00:49,120 --> 01:00:53,320
Speaker 13: really big question about gene drives because what if this

1261
01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:58,680
Speaker 13: crisper gene gets transmitted farther afield. I think that's the

1262
01:00:58,720 --> 01:01:01,400
Speaker 13: real concern, But keep in mind, in your own gut.

1263
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:04,840
Speaker 13: Right now, you have thousands of bacteria that contain all

1264
01:01:04,920 --> 01:01:08,040
Speaker 13: kinds of crisper systems, and I'm not worried about those

1265
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:09,600
Speaker 13: transmitting into human cells.

1266
01:01:09,880 --> 01:01:11,760
Speaker 1: And I should note there are labs that are working

1267
01:01:11,800 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 1: on anti gene drive techniques, like a gene that you

1268
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:17,080
Speaker 1: could release into the population that would sort of stop

1269
01:01:17,160 --> 01:01:19,480
Speaker 1: the gene drive. And so there are some folks who

1270
01:01:19,520 --> 01:01:22,280
Speaker 1: are forward thinking about this problem and are trying to

1271
01:01:22,280 --> 01:01:25,200
Speaker 1: stop it. But then we can return to Daniel's earlier point,

1272
01:01:25,200 --> 01:01:28,680
Speaker 1: which is that biology is complicated and biologists don't necessarily

1273
01:01:28,720 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen. So, like, what if we

1274
01:01:30,720 --> 01:01:34,640
Speaker 1: knock out one mosquito species, a different mosquito species fills

1275
01:01:34,680 --> 01:01:37,840
Speaker 1: that niche, and that species is even better at transmitting

1276
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: the disease. Now we've you know, maybe we can release

1277
01:01:40,680 --> 01:01:43,360
Speaker 1: gene drives again to control the problem. But like, it's

1278
01:01:43,400 --> 01:01:45,160
Speaker 1: hard to know what's going to happen to a system

1279
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:48,600
Speaker 1: when you remove an animal that has you know, a

1280
01:01:48,680 --> 01:01:51,520
Speaker 1: large number of individuals out in the population, and we

1281
01:01:51,560 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: don't really understand the ecological impacts. So Daniel mentioned that

1282
01:01:55,320 --> 01:01:59,400
Speaker 1: some mosquitoes pollinate chocolate, you know, may what if you

1283
01:01:59,440 --> 01:02:01,680
Speaker 1: have a mosquite species that ends up being an important

1284
01:02:01,680 --> 01:02:04,840
Speaker 1: food source, for example, for a fish species that is

1285
01:02:04,840 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: an important source of protein for the local community. So like,

1286
01:02:08,600 --> 01:02:11,320
Speaker 1: there's a lot of you know, ecological stuff that might

1287
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:14,160
Speaker 1: happen that we don't understand very well. And so making

1288
01:02:14,160 --> 01:02:17,720
Speaker 1: the decision to knock out a species because we've decided

1289
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:19,760
Speaker 1: we wanted to do that, you know, could have some

1290
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:21,720
Speaker 1: other implications. But if, on the other hand, you're talking

1291
01:02:21,760 --> 01:02:23,880
Speaker 1: about you know, more than half a million people dying

1292
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:27,480
Speaker 1: every year from malaria, my tolerance for taking risks goes

1293
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:29,560
Speaker 1: up a little bit. But those risks should be well

1294
01:02:29,600 --> 01:02:31,560
Speaker 1: thought through, in my opinion, and I hope that.

1295
01:02:31,560 --> 01:02:34,640
Speaker 4: You're including my itchy ankles from mosquito bytes in your calculation.

1296
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:36,040
Speaker 4: I'm not away a lot.

1297
01:02:36,280 --> 01:02:37,000
Speaker 2: I'm not no.

1298
01:02:39,280 --> 01:02:40,920
Speaker 4: And of course Kitchen is going to vote. We do

1299
01:02:41,080 --> 01:02:42,080
Speaker 4: so on that voted again.

1300
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:46,360
Speaker 1: So where we are on this right now is that

1301
01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:50,360
Speaker 1: some genetically modified mosquitoes have been released and we're doing

1302
01:02:50,400 --> 01:02:53,880
Speaker 1: tests on those, but no gene drive mosquitoes have been

1303
01:02:53,960 --> 01:02:57,120
Speaker 1: released yet. There was a target malaria was working in

1304
01:02:57,160 --> 01:03:00,360
Speaker 1: Bikina Fassa to try to get community buy in, to

1305
01:03:00,440 --> 01:03:03,320
Speaker 1: get people on board with this idea of releasing gene drives,

1306
01:03:03,680 --> 01:03:07,200
Speaker 1: but recently their facility was essentially rated and they were

1307
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:09,560
Speaker 1: told that their project is being shut down. It was

1308
01:03:09,600 --> 01:03:12,000
Speaker 1: a little bit unclear what happened because it seemed like

1309
01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:14,520
Speaker 1: the Target Malaria group was in good with the local community,

1310
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:17,200
Speaker 1: in good with the government. There have been some like

1311
01:03:17,280 --> 01:03:20,880
Speaker 1: think tanks that think that the problem actually is Russian disinformation,

1312
01:03:21,120 --> 01:03:23,600
Speaker 1: where this message has been spread that we are using

1313
01:03:23,640 --> 01:03:27,760
Speaker 1: genetic modification to make people sterile, and you know, releasing

1314
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:31,280
Speaker 1: these genetic mosquitos will sterilize the local population. So it

1315
01:03:31,320 --> 01:03:37,120
Speaker 1: has become a complicated ethical, geopolitical problem, and that's where

1316
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:39,240
Speaker 1: we are right now. We are sort of trying to

1317
01:03:39,240 --> 01:03:41,720
Speaker 1: decide as a society what we're going to do when

1318
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:44,200
Speaker 1: we have this technique that could be used to save

1319
01:03:44,200 --> 01:03:47,040
Speaker 1: a bunch of lives from malaria, but has you know,

1320
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:50,040
Speaker 1: potential implications, some of which we know about and some

1321
01:03:50,120 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: of which we might not even understand unless we were

1322
01:03:53,160 --> 01:03:54,560
Speaker 1: to actually try the experiment.

1323
01:03:55,080 --> 01:03:57,760
Speaker 2: So it's complicated because it's biology, but.

1324
01:03:57,800 --> 01:04:00,720
Speaker 4: It's worthwhile because these are people's lives. It matters.

1325
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:03,640
Speaker 13: Yeah, I think it's so interesting that it's more controversial

1326
01:04:03,680 --> 01:04:06,520
Speaker 13: when we understand what we're doing better. I mean, for example,

1327
01:04:06,560 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 13: in agriculture, we've been selecting for traits for thousands of

1328
01:04:10,160 --> 01:04:13,000
Speaker 13: years that have all kinds of ecological impact, and we

1329
01:04:13,040 --> 01:04:15,760
Speaker 13: don't find that to be controversial. But as soon as

1330
01:04:15,800 --> 01:04:19,360
Speaker 13: we use molecular biology tools to genetically engineer things, it's

1331
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:23,840
Speaker 13: less understandable and somehow scarier, although the implications could be

1332
01:04:23,840 --> 01:04:24,240
Speaker 13: the same.

1333
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:25,720
Speaker 5: So I think that's really interesting.

1334
01:04:25,960 --> 01:04:29,200
Speaker 1: All right, So we have had a fun, complicated discussion

1335
01:04:29,440 --> 01:04:33,920
Speaker 1: about mosquitos and genetic engineering, and Katrina, I have no

1336
01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:35,520
Speaker 1: doubt we'll bring you back on the show five or

1337
01:04:35,560 --> 01:04:36,800
Speaker 1: six more times before.

1338
01:04:36,560 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 2: The end of the year, which is only a couple

1339
01:04:38,440 --> 01:04:42,680
Speaker 2: weeks off. Thanks for coming back on the show.

1340
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:44,320
Speaker 5: Well, thank you for having me.

1341
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:47,200
Speaker 1: Thank you to our listeners for submitting their questions. Let's

1342
01:04:47,200 --> 01:04:49,040
Speaker 1: hear what they had to say about the episode.

1343
01:04:49,280 --> 01:04:52,040
Speaker 14: I really appreciate you getting to my question and in

1344
01:04:52,120 --> 01:04:54,920
Speaker 14: the most relevant episode. I can't say that I'm entirely

1345
01:04:54,960 --> 01:04:57,680
Speaker 14: convinced that the reason gene drives haven't been tested yet

1346
01:04:57,840 --> 01:05:01,400
Speaker 14: aren't nefarious. After all, if your goal was eradication and

1347
01:05:01,440 --> 01:05:04,560
Speaker 14: you released enough mosquitoes on a small island, and considering

1348
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:07,320
Speaker 14: the length of the mosquito life cycle, how long would

1349
01:05:07,360 --> 01:05:10,840
Speaker 14: it take to eradicate the species entirely a short time

1350
01:05:10,920 --> 01:05:13,560
Speaker 14: period leaves very little time for the genes to jump.

1351
01:05:14,080 --> 01:05:16,840
Speaker 14: If the gene drive did jump species and eradicate another

1352
01:05:16,840 --> 01:05:19,760
Speaker 14: species of mosquito, oh why has no native mosquitos to

1353
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:22,920
Speaker 14: worry about? In fact, the six to eight invasive mosquito

1354
01:05:22,960 --> 01:05:25,240
Speaker 14: species on the islands would make a great test case

1355
01:05:25,280 --> 01:05:25,960
Speaker 14: to see if the.

1356
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:27,480
Speaker 4: Gene drives do jump species.

1357
01:05:28,120 --> 01:05:30,680
Speaker 14: Maybe some diligent pesticide use by the ports could keep

1358
01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:35,320
Speaker 14: any modified mosquitos from leaving the island before total eradication. Overall,

1359
01:05:35,320 --> 01:05:37,880
Speaker 14: it seems much less risky than Uruguay's plan to use

1360
01:05:37,880 --> 01:05:41,360
Speaker 14: gene drives to eradicate screw worms. Given the biodiversity of

1361
01:05:41,360 --> 01:05:45,200
Speaker 14: South America. Maybe the answer is in Wolbakia, which you covered.

1362
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:48,080
Speaker 14: Perhaps is just less risky. It looks like they started

1363
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:51,120
Speaker 14: attempting to use it to radicate coolx mosquitos on Maui

1364
01:05:51,160 --> 01:05:53,360
Speaker 14: to save native birds. Thanks so much.

1365
01:06:00,400 --> 01:06:03,880
Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio.

1366
01:06:04,160 --> 01:06:06,800
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1367
01:06:06,960 --> 01:06:09,720
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1368
01:06:09,920 --> 01:06:11,560
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1369
01:06:11,680 --> 01:06:14,600
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1370
01:06:14,640 --> 01:06:15,600
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1371
01:06:15,720 --> 01:06:18,080
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1372
01:06:18,320 --> 01:06:21,840
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1373
01:06:21,880 --> 01:06:25,120
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1374
01:06:24,160 --> 01:06:26,240
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1375
01:06:26,360 --> 01:06:30,160
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1377
01:06:31,200 --> 01:06:34,120
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1378
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