
We’re trying to stop bad mosquitoes by raising and releasing good ones - typage
http://debugproject.com/
======
AceJohnny2
*Verily Debug Project (title is currently "Google Debug Project")

Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences before the Alphabet split-up) is a
sister company to Google. This isn't Google, and it's not code, but a project
to help eliminate mosquitoes by a bioscience company.

~~~
gabeio
Your right it's a sister of Google _not_ a Google project, maybe a title
change to "Alphabet" instead of "Google". Especially since I clicked it
thinking it had something to do with code. :P

~~~
samuel1604
They do present it quite ostensibly as a programming project tho i.e: the
steps mentioned here
[http://debugproject.com/how/](http://debugproject.com/how/)

------
ThePhysicist
I wonder how long it will take for the mosquitoes to evolve a mechanism that
allows the female to detect males infected with that bacterium and not mate
with them, or a mechanism to counteract the detrimental effect on the
development of the eggs.

Right now the evolutionary pressure to do this is probably quite low as there
is only a small number of infected males, but if that number goes up the
pressure will increase exponentially.

Example:

If 1 % of males are currently infected with the bacteria, the selective
advantage of a mosquito that can counteract the infection is just 1.0/0.99 (as
the probability of mating with an infected male is just 1 percent), which is
probably too small compared to other risks to produce any visible evolutionary
effects.

If we increase the number of infected males to 90 %, the evolutionary
advantage of detecting them soars to 1.0/0.1 = 10! This means a mosquito able
to detect or counteract an infection is ten times as likely to produce
offspring, which provides an incredibly strong gradient for evolution.

The question is of course how fast an immunity can arise (or if it already
exists in the population), and how many generations of mosquitoes are able to
survive after the infected males are introduced.

Probably they ran their own population genetics simulations on this, so I'd be
curious to see results, which should give a good indication on whether this
can work and if so under which conditions.

My personal guess is that it won't be effective, as there are very few cases
where introducing a single external stress factor into a population causes it
to collapse entirely, what's more likely is that it will adapt and relapse.

~~~
sohkamyung
Yes, it may be possible for the mosquito to fight back.

The bacteria isn't mentioned in the video, but I believe it could be
Wolbachia, which is already pervalent in the insect world. According to this
FAQ [1], it already infects 60% of the insect world, so it appears that
developing an immunity to it might be pretty hard:

 _8\. Do other animals carry Wolbachia?_

 _Wolbachia is common among arthropods (including insects, spiders and other
small animals with no backbone). Up to 60% of insect species naturally carry
Wolbachia, including butterflies, dragonflies, moths and some mosquito
species, but not the primary species of mosquito involved in the transmission
of dengue._

 _Wolbachia is also found in certain types of roundworms – known as nematodes
– but this is very different to the insect Wolbachia that we work with.
Wolbachia is not found in any larger animals such as mammals, reptiles, birds
and fish._

\- [1] [
[http://www.eliminatedengue.com/faqs/index/type/wolbachia](http://www.eliminatedengue.com/faqs/index/type/wolbachia)
]

~~~
yabatopia
What are the effects of Wolbachia on other insects? Is there a risk that other
insects get eliminated by eating mosquitos carrying Wolbachia? It may be safe
for humans and larger mammals, but how about smaller animals ansd insects?

~~~
sohkamyung
The Wolbachia bacteria is a parasite, but it spreads by infecting the
reproductive organs of insects. I don't believe it can be spread by eating an
insect infected with Wolbachia, unlike other kinds of parasites.

------
matt4077
I still want to build:

\- An array of three microphones for locating mosquitos by sound

\- a servo-mounted laser

\- Software to combine the two, possibly with a manual mode.

~~~
robbrown451
Well it does sort of exist: [https://www.fastcoexist.com/3059127/what-
happened-to-the-mos...](https://www.fastcoexist.com/3059127/what-happened-to-
the-mosquito-zapping-laser-that-was-going-to-stop-malaria)

~~~
matt42
The last paragraph says:

Correction: This story used out of date information to claim that the
technology had been licensed out. It has not been licensed to date. As well,
it formerly stated that the U.S. Commerce Department paid for the company to
showcase the technology in Germany. It just invited the company. We regret the
errors.

------
repsilat
How is "Can't breed" a good thing? Something to do with

> good bugs ... will stop bad ones from reproducing

? Are mosquitos monogamous (or do they just get really tired after sex, or do
they transmit the infection to others...) If "good bugs" don't bite, I'd have
thought you'd want them to reproduce as much as possible, so long as not-
biting was hereditary. A non-reproducing population can never out-compete the
reproducing rest of the species.

~~~
raldi
This is all explained in the video. The process has nothing to do with
genetics; the good bugs don't bite because they're all male (the females are
weeded out by the scientists), and male mosquitoes never bite. And they can't
breed because of a bacteria related to healthy egg development. The good bugs
still mate (with bad bugs, since there are no good female bugs), they still
fertilize the eggs, but the eggs don't work.

~~~
repsilat
That explains most of it -- the not biting, the displacement effect. Still,
infertility is strongly selected against. Unless the introduced mosquitoes
_completely_ displace existing males in the mating pool, or the bacteria are
transmitted between mosquitoes, it sounds like a pretty short term fix. With
males living only 10 days, wouldn't the population bounce back pretty quickly?

------
hubert123
I dont get it, if you release a ton of sterile male mosquitos.. what exactly
is their purpose? They cant bite, breed or spread diseases.. well okay, but
why would the amount of bad mosquitos decrease in any way from their
introduction? Wouldnt they simply die out quickly then, what's the lifespan of
these good mosquitos? I dont get it at all.

~~~
metachris
[http://debugproject.com/how/](http://debugproject.com/how/)

Looks like they mate with females, which still lay eggs, but the won't hatch.
So less bad bugs mate and produce offspring. Needs large numbers of good bugs
though.

~~~
hubert123
Yeah it sounds like it would be better if the eggs still hatched but they
should only produce good male mosquitos again.

~~~
bagels
They're only 'good' because they're sterile, and capable of sabotaging
mosquito reproduction. If they weren't sterile and "only produce good male
mosquitos again", the population would not decrease, they would just be
releasing regular male mosquitos.

~~~
hubert123
right, which means that eventually the entire population would be male and
then die off

~~~
sp332
I was about to say that's impossible because meiosis produces equal number of
"male" and "female" cells but... someone actually did it.
[https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-
news/2014/06/eradic...](https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-
news/2014/06/eradicating-female-malaria-bearing-mosquitos.html)

------
piyush_soni
Seriously, Google (/Alphabet), as long as you continue to invest in such
research studies, you can take all of my so called personal data for its
progress and I won't mind.

~~~
al_chemist
Because my personal data is very helpful with creating infertile mosquitoes.

~~~
piyush_soni
Good try, but no, because my personal data can help them earn money (through
advertising or other means), which Alphabet can use for funding their research
in other areas.

------
doesnotexist
Will we eventually see resistance to the bacteria the way that bacteria evolve
to be resistant to antibiotics?

------
mattparlane
They don't mention this, but I believe this can cause extinction of mosquitoes
within an area:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique)

~~~
coldpie
I believe that is the goal. I'm all on board. I've heard about proposals like
this for years and years. I'm thrilled someone is actually working to make
this theory reality.

~~~
djb_hackernews
It'd be sort of like removing all of the kelp from the worlds oceans. It'd
have ripple effects on other species that we wouldn't want to negatively
affect.

~~~
willis77
People have studied this. While you have to take these theoretical "what if"
studies with a grain of salt, some believe that eradicating mosquitos would
not affect ecology in a major way:

[http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html)

~~~
djb_hackernews
I'm now at negative points for bringing up a point that is validated by quoted
experts in your cited source. (Which btw, uses a lot of "cover my ass" wording
when talking about wiping out a species found all over the globe)

I've gotten malaria on a trip to west Africa, I've had to get yellow fever
vaccines, i grew up in areas with west nile, etc I understand the impact it
has on humans. However, there is more to the mosquito than the little insect
flying around biting us. Their eggs and larvae play a huge role in the
ecosystems they inhabit.

~~~
coldpie
> I'm now at negative points for bringing up a point that is validated by
> quoted experts in your cited source.

I think it's hard to justify drawing an equivalence between exterminating
mosquitoes, which scientists have studied and broadly believe to be safe, and
_removing most of the plant matter from the oceans_. I would not have
downvoted you, but it's not hard to understand how you ended up there.

------
robbrown451
This seems like the only way it can work is to completely overwhelm the
population with these sterile males, which seems prohibitively expensive.

I'm also a fan of the idea of the idea of locating them with sensors and
shooting them out of the air with a cheap laser. It seems like this sort of
technology should get very inexpensive pretty soon.

------
corecoder
I first read about using sterile male mosquitoes more than twenty years ago
(there was no mention of the bacteria, so I don't know if a different
technique was proposed); how comes this is news now?

Or is it that this has been proposed since forever but only now someone is
talking of actually throwing money at it?

Edit: typos

~~~
cc_
Not an expert, but I think an important part of this is only releasing male
mosquitoes, and separating them at scale is generally considered to be
difficult (there have been other successful uses of SIT but always with
different species).

From their FAQ it sounds like they have made progress on this front:

> What has Debug accomplished so far?

> We've developed methods for automated mosquito-rearing, and we know that we
> can separate males from females with high precision, and we’re continuing
> development of these technologies at larger scale in our lab.

------
smnscu
Similar (using crispr to change the mosquitoes' genome) video from Kurzgesagt,
one of my favourite Youtube channels:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzcwTyr6cE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzcwTyr6cE)

------
blablabla123
Wow, do people ever learn from history? I mean you just have to visit
Australia to see what happens when you mess with nature...

------
fiatjaf
What's going to happen: a bug in development will cause the "good" mosquitoes'
eggs to actually hatch, giving birth to mosquitoes that, because of an
unexpected consequence of the bug, are immune to all other forms of killing
AND live longer AND can give birth to many more mosquitoes than the previous,
normal, "bad" mosquito.

------
interdrift
Develop this on GitHub. It will have huge public impact and will pick up steam
fast!

------
govindpatel
Well, How will they know that all the bad bugs are gone?

~~~
arpa
Simple, when all the bugs are gone.

------
computerwizard
I'm sure this will end well..

~~~
jaflo
What is your concern?

~~~
azinman2
So many potential unexpected consequences. Most attempts at killing off a pest
have resulted in all kinds of negative shifts in the environment that end up
being worse, just look at the Great Leap Forward in China. There are examples
worldwide of this. Ecology is just too networked and interdependent to be able
to easily engineer.

~~~
laurent123456
There have been a lot of studies on this, and apparently it is safe to
eradicate these particular mosquitoes (and given how many people are sick each
years because of them, it doesn't feel like it could be worse than not
eradicating them).

In any case, it's not really comparable to idiots killing birds during the
GLF, since it was a completely stupid policy based on no science at all.

------
_pmf_
Releasing a species to control another species; what could possibly go wrong?

------
partycoder
The problem I see is that, while this can be used for good, it can also be
weaponized.

Zika for example, has existed for thousands of years if not millions of years.
How come just in 2015 there's this massive unprecedented outbreak? Just when
Oxitec starts releasing their "good mosquitoes"?

What specifically changed and caused this outbreak?

~~~
sohkamyung
Whatever caused the Zika outbreak in Brazil has nothing to do with Oxitec. As
this post shows, Oxitec released their mosquitoes years before the Zika
epidemic in Brazil and the release was done hundreds of miles away [1]

\- [1] "No, GM Mosquitoes Didn’t Start The Zika Outbreak." [
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-
sushi/2016/01/31/g...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-
sushi/2016/01/31/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-didnt-start-zika-ourbreak/) ]

~~~
partycoder
Thanks, very informative.

