Toxic lover: Genetically engineering males to have venomous semen could wipe out disease-carrying insects

One way to shrink populations of disease-carrying pests is known as the sterile insect technique: Basically, you release tons of sterile males to mate with fertile females, preventing them from successfully adding to the next generation. While the method can work well, it requires enough males to be released to flood the mating market. In addition, fruitlessly mated females can still transmit disease until they die. Now, researchers have found a way to up the efficiency: Instead of males’ semen lacking viable sperm, it contains lethal toxins from a venomous animal.

When researchers tested the approach on fruit flies, they found that toxins from anemones and Brazilian wandering spiders were most effective, reducing the median lifespans of mated female flies by up to 64%. Additional modeling they performed suggested such mortality would reduce female mosquito populations faster than other approaches and lower blood feeding by as much as 60%. Even better, because these venom toxins are more molecularly targeted than broad-spectrum insecticides, the animals are unlikely to develop resistance to them, the team claims.

They aim to test the idea in mosquitoes next, and if all goes well, such “toxic males” could be deployed in as little as five years.
#mosquitoes #insects #arboviruses #ecology https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54863-1