Verily, the life sciences branch Google’s parent company Alphabet has started releasing millions of mosquitoes in California.
The team behind the project plans to set a million of the flying insects free each week for 20 weeks.
The mosquitoes are being released into two neighbourhoods in Fresno, California as part of a field study for the Debug Project, an initiative that aims tor decimate certain mosquito populations.
The mosquitoes were raised by a robot that can produce a million mosquitoes a week. They’re all male, so they won’t bite anyone – only female mosquitoes bite humans.
The bugs have been specially raised to carry a bacteria called Wolbachia , which has an insidious effect on the reproductive process.
Mosquitoes that carry Wolbachia can fly around normally and mate with females, but the eggs those females lay aren’t able to hatch – unless the females are infected with the same strain of the bacteria as well.
Setting loose hoards of males carrying the bacteria, then, is like waging biological warfare on mosquitoes.
The ability to kill entire mosquito populations could significantly curb disease transmission. Mosquitoes carry diseases like yellow fever, malaria, dengue, Zika, and chikungunya, among others. They’re responsible for more than 800,000 human deaths a year, making them the most dangerous animal on the planet.
If the trial is successful, it’s likely that other related efforts will be carried out around the globe to target the mosquitoes that transmit malaria and other diseases.
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