If I asked you what you thought the deadliest animal on earth was, what would you say? Living in Canada sure makes deciding one animal pretty hard. Surprisingly, unlike what many of you would have guessed, the deadliest animal on earth is smaller than my finger nail. Our culprit is mosquitoes, which are considered the deadliest animal on earth because of their role in spreading diseases, like malaria.
“Malaria may cause anemia and jaundice (yellow coloring of the skin and eyes) because of the loss of red blood cells. If not promptly treated, the infection can become severe and cause kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion, coma, and death” (CDC – Malaria – About Malaria – FAQs, 2021). People who have weak immunity to the disease are more likely to become extremely sick or even die, meaning the lives of many people, especially children, are at stake.
I don’t know about you guys, but mosquitoes are my archnemeses. Like almost everyone, I enjoy spending my time outside during the summer (which lasts like 2 months in Calgary). However, when I’m outside, I have a one on one battle with a swarm of mosquitoes every time. To make matters worse, rather than having an itchy area on my arm for a couple of days, I am presented with a whole ligament being sore and swollen. Like most of us, I have always wanted to get rid of mosquitoes, but how would that work?
Solutions?
If you are a mosquito hating maniac like me or just interested in science, you may have heard about something called CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. For a fantastic explanation of what CRISPR is, check out: https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/genomicresearch/genomeediting/. Some scientists want to apply this advanced gene editing method to our mosquito situation. CRISPR-Cas9 would be used to impact the fertility of male mosquitoes and interestingly, it would also impact the fertility of female mosquitoes. In other words, the infertility gene mutation could be contagious, as a result, slowing the reproduction rate of mosquitoes.
Another similar idea scientists have is to release a significant number of infertile male mosquitoes into an environment so that females will mate with them but won’t be able to reproduce. In other words, more females would be mating with infertile mosquitoes rather than fertile ones, therefore slowing down the rate of population. This solution is more temporary than using CRISPR though, because after the group of infertile male mosquitoes die, the fertile ones will begin to mate with females once again.
These ideas may seem far-fetched for now, but as new developments are made in science, who knows? Maybe we’ll find ourselves looking towards a future where we don’t consider mosquitoes as significant of a threat.
Despite the odd timing of this post, with winter around the corner, I hope you still found it enjoyable! Stay safe!