Alphabet's plan to wipe out malign mosquitoes seems to be working
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Sunday
January 29, 2023

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2023
Alphabet's plan to wipe out malign mosquitoes seems to be working

Science

TBS Report
08 April, 2020, 12:15 pm
Last modified: 08 April, 2020, 12:55 pm

Related News

  • US Justice Dept sues Google over digital advertising dominance
  • Google parent to lay off 12,000 workers in latest blow to tech sector
  • Google vows to cooperate with India antitrust authority after Android decision
  • India's antitrust directives on Android spooks Google
  • Google warns Android growth in India will stall due to antitrust order

Alphabet's plan to wipe out malign mosquitoes seems to be working

Stamping out illness caused by mosquitoes is one of Alphabet unit Verily’s most ambitious projects, who is also running coronavirus triage and testing in parts of California

TBS Report
08 April, 2020, 12:15 pm
Last modified: 08 April, 2020, 12:55 pm
Alphabet's plan to wipe out malign mosquitoes seems to be working

An experimental program led by Google parent Alphabet Inc to wipe out disease-causing mosquitoes succeeded in nearly eliminating them from three test sites in California's Central Valley, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology on April 6.

Stamping out illness caused by mosquitoes is one of Alphabet unit Verily's most ambitious public-health projects who is also running coronavirus triage and testing in parts of Californiam, Bloomberg reported.

Bradley White, the lead scientist on the Debug initiative said, "Mosquito-suppression is even more important during the pandemic, so that outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever don't further overwhelm hospitals."

In results of the trial published on April 6, Verily revealed that throughout the peak of the 2018 mosquito season, from July to October, Wolbachia-infected males successfully suppressed more than 93% of the female mosquito population at field test sites. Only female mosquitoes typically bite.

Since 2017, the company has released millions of lab-bred Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes into several Fresno County neighborhoods during mosquito season. The insects are bred in Verily labs to be infected with a common bacterium called Wolbachia. When these male mosquitoes mate with females in the wild, the offspring never hatch.

Working with the local mosquito abatement district and MosquitoMate, which developed the mosquitoes originally, Verily released as many as 80,000 mosquitoes each day in three neighborhoods from April 2018 through October 2018. In most collections, per night Verily found one or zero female mosquitoes in each trap designed to monitor the population. At other sites without the lab-bred bugs, there were as many as 16 females per trap.

"We had a vision of what this should look like and we managed to do that pretty perfectly," said Jacob Crawford, a senior scientist on the Debug project.

In the arid climate of the Central Valley, disease is an unlikely result of a mosquito bite. But in the hot, humid regions of the tropics and subtropics, diseases caused by the Aedes aegypti, such as dengue fever, zika virus and chikungunya, kill tens of thousands of people every year.

Releasing masses of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes into the wild might wipe out entire populations of deadly mosquitoes and the diseases they carry.

Verily is not the only organization pursuing an end to mosquito-borne disease. Microsoft Corp. co-Founder Bill Gates has pledged more than $1 billion to help wipe out malaria, including controversial efforts to genetically modify mosquitoes. Infecting mosquitoes with Wolbachia, which occurs naturally in some mosquito species, is a popular approach rooted in an old insect control strategy called sterile insect technique.

What Verily's efforts offer is not just evidence that Wolbachia can help wipe out disease-causing mosquitoes but potential ways to make such efforts work on a massive scale.

Last year, Verily released about 14.4 million mosquitoes in Fresno County.

Initial small-scale Fresno trials in 2016, run by an upstart called MosquitoMate, were the first time male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with the bacteria were ever released in the US The following year, Verily stepped in bringing more advanced technology to the breeding and release process that could make it possible to expand such efforts to entire cities or regions.

The new paper details many of those technologies, such as an automated process for separating male and female mosquitoes in the lab, and software that helps to determine exactly where to release altered male mosquitoes for maximum effectiveness.

"Once you try to start rearing hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes a week, you run into all sorts of problems," said White. "Mosquitoes may be everywhere, but they are really finicky and difficult to grow."

Verily has expanded its partnerships to include Singapore's National Environment Agency. Trials there have entered a fourth phase to cover 121 urban residential blocks and about 45,000 residents. Verily is eyeing partnerships in South America and is in talks to launch in the Caribbean.

Within a few years, said Crawford, Verily hopes the program will cover entire regions. Without intervention, he said, the public health toll of mosquito-born illness will only grow.

"This is something that's not going away on its own," he said.

Top News

google / Alphabet Inc / Alphabet Inc's unit Verily / Verily

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • Getting gas to India will be even more costly than laying this pipe to China.Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
    Russia can't replace the energy market Putin broke
  • Ex-MD Mehmood Hossain rejoining National Bank
    Ex-MD Mehmood Hossain rejoining National Bank
  • Ahsan H Mansur. Sketch: TBS
    Monetary policy should be made with understanding of market: Ahsan H Mansur

MOST VIEWED

  • Photo: BBC
    Hubble telescope captures supermassive black hole eating a star
  • Photo: Collected
    Green comet zooming our way, last visited 50,000 years ago
  • Simulated image shows the positions and orbits of the newly discovered 591 high velocity stars by a Chinese research team. Photo: National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
    Star visibility eroding rapidly as night sky gets brighter: study
  • The NASA logo hangs in the Mission Operations Control Center at Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, U.S., October 26, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
    NASA, Boeing team up to develop lower-emissions aircraft
  • Photo: Collected
    12-million-year-old whale fossil skull found in Maryland
  • Photo: Collected
    New species of lizard discovered in Peru national park

Related News

  • US Justice Dept sues Google over digital advertising dominance
  • Google parent to lay off 12,000 workers in latest blow to tech sector
  • Google vows to cooperate with India antitrust authority after Android decision
  • India's antitrust directives on Android spooks Google
  • Google warns Android growth in India will stall due to antitrust order

Features

Nandita Sharmin's journey to give organic skincare a new identity

Nandita Sharmin's journey to give organic skincare a new identity

8h | Mode
Illustration: TBS

'The silver lining is that the worst is sort of behind us': Hamid Rashid, UN economist

11h | Panorama
Photo: Bloomberg

BuzzFeed and AI are a match made in fad city

10h | Panorama
Snipe in flight. Photo: Enam Ul Haque

Baikka Beel: 'A world where snipe work late'

1d | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

Sarika Sabrin is waiting for a good film

Sarika Sabrin is waiting for a good film

1h | TBS Entertainment
Take your football game to the next level at Next Level academy

Take your football game to the next level at Next Level academy

2h | TBS SPORTS
“Investments risky without consistent policy, reliable data”- SK Bashir Uddin

“Investments risky without consistent policy, reliable data”- SK Bashir Uddin

4h | TBS Round Table
What does Shahrukh has in his 770 million dollar property?

What does Shahrukh has in his 770 million dollar property?

1d | TBS Entertainment

Most Read

1
Picture: Collected
Bangladesh

US Embassy condemns recent incidents of visa fraud

2
Illustration: TBS
Banking

16 banks at risk of capital shortfall if top 3 borrowers default

3
Photo: Collected
Splash

Hansal Mehta responds as Twitter user calls him 'shameless' for making Faraaz

4
A frozen Beyond Burger plant-based patty. Photographer: AKIRA for Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Special

Fake meat was supposed to save the world. It became just another fad

5
Bapex calls candidates for job test 9 years after advert!
Bangladesh

Bapex calls candidates for job test 9 years after advert!

6
Representational Image
Banking

Cash-strapped Islami, Al-Arafah and National turn to Sonali Bank for costly fund

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2023
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]