Can Google take down the world's deadliest animal?
Google requests to release 64 million laboratory-bred mosquitoes in the next two years. The project is called Debug and the goal is simple, to debug America.
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Research shows that female mosquitoes find humans by tracking scent cues, like chemicals from our skin and breath. Mosquitoes are also drawn to certain colors. University of Washington biology professor Jeffrey Riffell and his team study mosquito sensory systems, especially their sense of smell, to understand how mosquitoes find food.
Google is on a mission to control the population of bugs, but not the ones on your computer.
Mosquitoes carry diseases that are responsible for causing nearly one million human deaths per year. This includes diseases such as dengue, West Nike, Zika, chikungunya, malaria and lymphatic filariasis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The mosquito, called the Aedes aegypti, puts 40% of the world at risk of contracting a disease, and Google is aiming to change that.
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The method itself isn't new. The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) method has been around since the 1950s, and has been used to control many other bugs, such as fruit flies, screwworm and codling moths.
mosquito (Culex pipiens) stinging human arm to feed on blood. (Photo by: via Getty Images) (Arterra/Universal Images Group / Getty Images)
The idea is simple: raise infertile male bugs and release them into the wild to mate with female mosquitoes. When a wild female mates with a sterile male, her eggs won’t hatch.
This process reduces the Aedes aegypti population generation after generation, according to Debug.
While researchers are exploring several ways to produce sterile mosquitoes, one current approach involves infecting male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia.
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Wolbachia bacteria cannot make people or animals sick and is already found in many insect species. When Wolbachia-infected males mate with wild females that do not carry the bacteria, the eggs fail to hatch, helping reduce mosquito populations over time, Debug said.
Close-up of a dengue mosquito biting human skin. Aedes aegypti transmits the dengue hemorrhagic fever virus through bites. Malaria, Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever. (Anggito Abimanyu / Getty Images)
Up until now, the SIT method did not work on mosquitoes at a large enough scale to stop diseases from being transmitted. In today's world, Google is making it possible with new technology that speeds up the breeding, separating and releasing processes.
The technology combines sensors and algorithms that use mosquito biology to quickly and accurately sort males from females. Basically, creating an insect production line and using AI/computer vision to sort the mosquitos by sex.
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Some may look for the ecological risk of the Debug process. The mosquito is an invasive species that almost exclusively feeds on humans in order to reproduce.
"The general consensus among scientists is that the ecological impact of removing Aedes aegypti mosquitoes from urban environments would be small," according to the Debug website.
Mosquito drinks blood (iiievgeniy)
The ecological goal is to restore the environment to how it was before the invasion. There is no risk to other bugs in the environment as the male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are designed to only find females of the same species. This means the other "good bugs" are not affected.
There is no increased risk of disease transmission or mosquito bites because only female mosquitoes bite, and with these large-scale releases, only male mosquitoes are released.
Small field Debug trials have already shown success, according to a study published in PubMed. Debug had its first major field trial in Fresno, California, in 2018.
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During peak mosquito season, the number of female mosquitoes was 95.5% lower in release areas compared to non-release areas, with the most geographically isolated neighborhood reaching a 99% reduction.
So the question now is not does this process work. We know it does. It's can we do this on a global scale?
Close up Mosquito Eggs Hatch On the finger. Huge magnification, visible fingerprints. (Tomasz Klejdysz / Getty Images)
Google has submitted a request to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to release up to 32 million of these "good bugs" in select counties across Florida and California.
After monitoring for a year, the next step would be to release 32 million more while continuing to monitor the mosquito population and disease transmission rates. The hope is that this phase works and the project can expand beyond FL and CA.
This overall reduces the Aedes aegypti population, which would save lives.