Genetically modified mosquitoes to combat

dengue in Brazil

Mosquito-born illnesses kill more people each year than all other animals combined. And dengue fever,
which effects tens of millions of people each year is seemingly out of control in Brazil - which has seen
cases of the potentially deadly virus increase 30 fold over the past 50 years. However, scientists from
UK-based biotech firm Oxitec have a solution. Researcher Sofia Bastos Pinto and her team are
genetically modifying millions of male mosquitoes whose sole purpose is to kill their own kind until the
entire population is wiped out. What they do is they release males into the environment so they can
mate with the females. The sperm of our male enters the egg and transmits the gene to all of his
descendants, this first line of descendants will inherit this gene, and then will die. These transgenic
insects carry a gene programmed to kill their offspring before they reach maturity , so they will never
reproduce. And if the insects can't reproduce the entire population dies out. In a recent trial, the
process reduced a local population of dengue mosquitoes by 96 percent.

http://in.reuters.com/video/2014/08/19/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-to-
comba?videoId=340538651&videoChannel=105