Gonad-chomping parasite may block transmission of Dengue fever (NOT via the Onion)

[DainBramaged]

Malaria might be the most widely recognized mosquito-borne disease, but it's hardly the only one. Dengue fever, transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, strikes 50 million people annually, and is endemic to over 100 countries. It's not often fatal but it does require medical intervention and, with that many infected individuals, even a low rate of mortality can add up. As with malaria, Dengue control generally focuses on its mosquito vectors, which can be challenging. Now, researchers have developed a way to keep the Dengue virus out of the mosquitoes: infect them with a bacterial parasite that protects its host from competing infections. The bacteria were even shown to be effective in a field test near Cairns, Australia.

Most approaches directed toward controlling the mosquitoes that carry viruses tend to run into problems because they simply kill the mosquitoes. Unless spraying is done continuously, however, mosquitoes will return from nearby areas, and the process creates a strong selective pressure that has driven the evolution of resistance to insecticides. There have been a few ideas about how mosquito control might be done through biological agents, but most of these would kill the mosquitoes too, and are likely to run into the same problems.

A better solution would be something that blocked the replication of the parasites but did nothing to harm the fitness of the mosquitos. And that's precisely what the new research has created.

Fighting a virus with a parasite
The work relies on a bacterial parasite called Wolbachia that is probably worth an article on its own. The bacteria can infect a wide range of hosts, including insects, where it will live inside the cells of various organs. Among its targets, however, is almost always the gonads, where it helps promote its spread by manipulating its hosts to ensure that infected females produce more infected eggs. It has several methods of doing this, including ensuring that all the male offspring die, causing infected males to develop as females, and allowing females to produce fertile offspring without ever mating.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/08/gonad-chomping-parasite-may-block-transmission-of-dengue-fever.ars

[saras]

1. Why do I see bad results from spreading a gonad-chomping parasite around the world?

"The bacteria can infect a wide range of hosts, including insects..."

Guess I must just be paranoid. It's not like we've ever made a mistake moving a species from one environment to another before.

[DainBramaged]

2. Came from a fruit fly........yet, I wonder what the military does with this research

I still don't believe AIDS was naturally occurring. I still think it was an experiment gone horribly wrong.