Mosquito

[Jonathan Cline]

Mosquito's are in the news again as the pillar of all evil (this time
due to Zika virus). What's the ramification of exterminating all
mosquitoes - if it could be done? Do they serve any purpose in ecology
other than being a tiny part of the food chain (if so is this tiny part
insignificant & replaceable)?

## Jonathan Cline
## jcl...@ieee.org
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[Simon Quellen Field]

Only the females drink blood (for egg making).

Perhaps the males are the sole pollinators of some plants?

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[Sebastian S Cocioba]

Male mosquites live off nectar. Fed some fruit juice when I found one in my home that was waaay too big to be female and too big for me to squash. There are talks and warnings of using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive to wipe out the malarial mosquito in as little as 6 generations but thats a whole can of worms. Would be a GREAT topic for discussion on this thread since the public is lapping up the CRISPR hype like crack these days. Anyone see the Gene Drive talk at iGEM last year? I missed it but wanted to go! 

Sebastian S. Cocioba

CEO & Founder

New York Botanics, LLC

Blog: ATinyGreenCell.com

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[Dennis Oleksyuk]

To those who want to have a sensible discussion I strongly suggest to read the paper first.

http://elifesciences.org/content/early/2014/07/15/eLife.03401

The team who design the gene drive technology for mosquitos went to the great length to ensure specificity of the gene altering, make it persist over generation, and to have a way to pull a plug if it turns out to be a disaster. I haven't seen any popular science or even scientific overview that gave the fair treatment to all of it. What most of them describe is very primitive version of what actually was done.

On the other hand I found really interesting how Zika outbreak interplays with society believes. The last time I've checked there were only 6 confirmed cases where Zika virus was colocated with children who had birth defects. While thousands of other kids who were clearly born from mothers infected with Zika did not have any issues. It resembles what happened to autism and vaccinate. It is much easier to blame an external factor than accept that shit just happens because of random mutations. What's amusing that in the case of Zika it can cause the society not only embrace the vaccines but also approve the gene drives years earlier than it otherwise would be approved.

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[Forrest Flanagan]

A lot of fish I like to eat depend on engorged, female mosquitoes laying eggs in their ponds. There's not very many things that aren't plants that'll bring new food to small ponds, and it's even rarer for food to present as wiggling little protein and calorie dense things just below the surface of the water for minnows and catfish to easily eat. 

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[Dennis Oleksyuk]

That's true. I could be wrong but it seems you implying that gene drives somehow will affect the mosquito population. It will not :) 

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[Sebastian Cocioba]

http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v34/n1/pdf/nbt.3439.pdf

An interesting read.

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[Dennis Oleksyuk]

This is different from George Church paper. Haven't seen this one.

Am I reading this right? Are they proposing to release mosquito plague?

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[Sebastian Cocioba]

Yup. Population suppression to an extent that the malarial vector has a very low chance if at all to propagate.

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[Dennis Oleksyuk]

It is just like Great Sparrow Campaign in China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign . Which is partially responsible for 20 million human death. 

I really don't get why Imperial College, Cambridge and others would fund such research considering that Church's lab already proposed a safer and by any measure more superior solution. Then I don't get why Nature would publish it.

The only explanation I can come up with is a scientific pity. The researchers in Europe are ready to develop a tool for a full blown ecological disaster just to somehow show that not only US or China can produce breakthrough in synthetic biology. And then European journal would publish it to prove that they are better than e-Life.

Please, someone give me a nicer explanation.

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[David Murphy]

@Dennis

Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species responsible for the zika outbreak in the americas is an *invasive species*.

It's a native of Africa, wiping it out in the Americas wouldn't leave any ecological niches empty, it would undo damage humans have done by introducing it so stop that romantic crap of believing it's somehow essential.
The species of mosquito spreading zika isn't going to cause disasters by being wiped out in the Americas.

There's 3,500 species of mosquito, only a few hundred bite humans, of those only a dozen or so are significant disease vectors so your fish will still have ~3475 species of mosquito to eat even if we totally wiped out every major disease carrying species of mosquito.

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[Matt Lawes]

Nice dose of reality! Thanks David.
>matt

Sent from my T-Mobile Android device

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[Cathal (Phone)]

More likely explanation: a combination of inertia (we were already developing thisbprivately for years) and rational fear of patent suits.

Patents destroy good ideas by providing a basis to reject ideas "NIH" (Not Invented Here). Plenty of funders and investors make it clear that they only fund projects whose entire basis, all good ideas thereof, were invented in-house. This goes against the essence of where innovation comes from; not from cathedrals, as it were, but from bazzaars.

Church's lab, IIRC, is part of the fistfight over who gets the right to sue anyone with a good idea involving CRISPR. Or, as it is otherwise known, the CRISPR patent. Therefore his lab is a known innovation toxin, regardless of his good intentions. Anything suggested by his lab even in passing becomes dangerous to attempt or implement because his institution may sue you into oblivion for even trying.

So, saying "Church said do *this*" is precisely why anyone rational would instead do *that* instead. At least with *that* you don't already know someone who'll prevent you from innovating.

This rant brought to you by early morning and insufficient caffeine.

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[Dennis Oleksyuk]

@David Murphy thank for providing the context about the mosquito ecology. 

I had no idea that there are so many species and that we are responsible 

for the spread of Aedes aegypti. This is really good ammunition for discussions.

@Cathal get some coffee please. Then could you provide some examples of George Church suing or threatening to sue some scientists who are trying to use one of his patented to technologies to advance science? I have no doubts that pharma companies sue each other over those patents till death. What I'm really curios to see is a real example of suppressing the innovation. 

I could not find it. Probably mostly because the last name Church makes Google think I'm looking for stuff related to religion institutions. Considering your rant I bet you have a concrete name.

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[John Griessen]

On 02/12/2016 09:34 PM, Dennis Oleksyuk wrote:
> What I'm really curios to see is a real example of suppressing the innovation.
> I could not find it.

You think a 20 year monopoly speeds innovation? Even if it can be bought for little details as well as
big concepts?

[Simon Quellen Field]

Yes, patents speed innovation.

As a society, we grant a 19 year monopoly in exchange for publication of the details of the invention. We do this because the alternative is everyone keeping those details secret, which definitely slows down innovation. Going back to the days when alchemists kept their recipes in secret codes is not better than what we have today.

What we need is to put more money into the patent office, so they can do a better job, and make it easier for the public to challenge patents that are too broad, or that aren't actually innovation. The current system defines prior art as prior patents, largely because the patent office does not have the resources to (or the help from the public) to do a better job. If the patent office could insist that there was enough information in the patent to reproduce the work, that would bring us back the main benefit of the system. This is a problem that peer review of scientific papers is supposed to help with, and even there we are finding problems (most recently in psychology research, where one study found over 30% of the results were irreproducible).

None of us on this list are hampered by patents. We are hampered by money. If we wanted to spend the money, we could use any patented methods we like, and not run afoul of patent law, because we aren't selling anything. It is only when you start making money from someone else's idea that you get into trouble. We are free to innovate. We are just not free to profit.

Patents attract capital. Capital likes the monopoly protection they provide. Without the security of that protection, there would be less capital to fuel further innovation. And since we are not the only ones hampered by a lack of money, patents speed innovation.

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[John Griessen]

On 02/13/2016 09:26 AM, Simon Quellen Field wrote:
> make it easier for the public to challenge patents that are too broad, or that aren't actually innovation. The current system
> defines prior art as prior patents, largely because the patent office does not have the resources to (or the help from the public)
> to do a better job. If the patent office could insist that there was enough information in the patent to reproduce the work, that
> would bring us back the main benefit of the system.

+1, and I think the term of 20 years is too long and the prices for the process are too high, especially since the process is
guarded/led/gate-kept by the consultants that live off the fees.

[Jake]

Glad to see the consensus here seems to be that all disease vector mosquitoes could be eliminated with a negligible negative effect on the environment.

Didn't really follow the patent discussion though.  When human lives are on the line are we really worried about a potential patent suit down the road on something we made little to no money from?

I'm not sure what the motivation for the infringement suit would be if there is no money to be had.  I don't doubt that in some other circumstances you might be the subject of a punitive action, but it doesn't seem like that would be the case in this instance.

Supposing a small non-profit corporation accidentally infringed on a patent or was unable to obtain suitable licensing terms and pursued a course that invited an infringement suit... what would the ramifications be?  Would mega-corp sue a humanitarian organization just to make it fold and intimidate others with no hope of a profitable judgement?

-Jake