Bengaluru: Google has found a solution to Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika—more mosquitoes.
Alphabet Inc’s life sciences wing, Verily, has been breeding “good” mosquitoes for the past 10 years under its Debug programme. Now it’s seeking permission to release 64 million of these good bugs in California and Florida.
Debug’s engineers and scientists have been developing technology to raise and release male mosquitoes that are infected with a naturally-occurring bacteria called Wolbachia. The bacteria make them unable to produce offspring; any eggs they have with the “bad” bugs won’t hatch. Effectively bringing down the population of deadly bugs over time.
They’ve also picked male mosquitoes as they don’t bite, thus preventing them from spreading disease.
Google has filed a request with the US Environmental Protection Agency to take the project forward. A notice from the Federal Register shows that the EPA has invited public comments on the matter until 5 June, as “the permit may be of regional and national significance.”
So far, Debug has been working with the Aedes aegypti species of mosquitoes, associated with dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya. But the current proposal lists another species—Culex quinquefasciatus. It’s a carrier of the West Nile virus and St. Louis encephalitis.
The Register notes that the plan is spread over two years—16 million mosquitoes will be released in both California and Florida in year 1, and another 16 million will be released in both locations in year 2. Specific areas have not been disclosed.
The EPA is reviewing the proposal. The Agency also issued a press release last week, indicating that no approvals have been given yet, with a warning that any unauthorised release “would constitute a violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and would be subject to enforcement action.”
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How it works
Google’s Debug project is based on the Sterile Insect Technique. A sound theory that has been used to control populations of fruit flies, screwworms, and codling moths. The problem is scale.
“Making a lot of good bugs is really, really hard,” according to Debug’s introductory video on the project.
To fix this issue, it’s created bug-sorting algorithms, bug-tracking sensors, and bug-raising robots.
Its website breaks down the process into six steps. The first is to develop modified male mosquitoes. That’s done using the Wolbachia bacteria.
Next is to rear them. That’s where the bug-raising robots come into play. Then comes sorting the good bugs into male and female. For this, it’s developing new technology that takes “advantage of unique aspects of mosquito biology to quickly and accurately sort males from females.”
Step four is when the modified males are released into the wild. The hope is that they reach out to the females in hard-to-reach areas and mate with them. It’s critical to get the location and number of the bugs right. Debug is building “software and monitoring tools to guide each release.”
The penultimate step is where the magic happens. Any eggs produced from the mating of a “good” bug and a “bad” bug won’t hatch. This means that the next generation will be smaller.
The final step is to monitor and repeat these results across the world.
The ultimate goal of the project is to kill off disease-causing mosquitoes so “more people can go to work, school and go outside without worrying about getting sick.”