Chethma De Mel, Jadetimes Staff
C. J. De Mel is a Jadetimes news reporter covering Entertainment News
Making the male mosquitoes deaf is now another approach by scientists in reducing the spread of such mosquito-borne diseases as dengue, yellow fever, and Zika. Interfering with their hearing disrupts mating, potentially reducing mosquito populations.
Males rely on their sense of hearing to track down females, as they often mate in mid-air, tracing the characteristic buzz of the female's wingbeats. Scientists from the University of California, Irvine manipulated the genetic pathway behind this auditory ability in the males. In the study, male mosquitoes harboring the altered gene were unable to recognize female wingbeats, and after three days of being caged together remained virgins.
Since only female mosquitoes are known to deliver diseases to humans, delaying their capability to reproduce may cut mosquito populations and hamper the transmission of diseases. The team focused on the species Aedes aegypti, which infected around 400 million people in the world every year. Following the mosquitoes' short aerial love-making sessions, scientists traced one necessary protein for hearing to be trpVa. Male mosquitoes with this mutation had neurons insensitive to the wingbeats of would-be mates. Wild males, in contrast, bred with almost every female in the cage within minutes of its opening.
In a study published in the journal PNAS, University of California, Santa Barbara, researchers highlighted that the genetic modification totally devastated the mating capabilities of these deaf males. According to Dr Joerg Albert, an expert in mosquito mating from the University of Oldenburg said the study has enormous potential towards controlling mosquitoes. He added that such disturbance in hearing would make female mosquitoes extinct since the male ones wouldn't be able to chase them acoustically.
Other techniques are also being studied in the war against mosquitoes that include the liberation of sterile males into areas that highly endure under these illnesses. Though mosquitoes are vectors of disease, they also contribute to the ecosystem in general because they serve as a source of food for many other creatures, and even serve as pollinators for some plant species.
