by
Bonnie Burton
Lab-grown mosquitoes armed with bacterium Wolbachia pipientis could be
the key to killing off insects that often transmit dangerous viruses
such as Zika...https://www.cnet.com/news/epa-wolbachia-bacteria-infected-insects-kill-mosquitoes-mosquitomate/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
By Bill Sanderson Saudi Arabia's King Salman (right) and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef walk to greet President Obama in Riy...
False: "Instead of relying on genetic engineering, MosquitoMate infects lab-grown mosquitoes with the common bacterium Wolbachia pipientis, which affects mosquitoes but not animals or humans." Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/epa-wolbachia-bacteria-infected-insects-kill-mosquitoes-mosquitomate
ReplyDeleteThe 2006 study "Survival of Wolbachia pipientis in Cell-Free Medium" by Rasgon et al. clearly states:
"Wolbachia infections are maintained by strict maternal inheritance, horizontal transfer events are common over evolutionary time."
"Wolbachia bacteria were able to survive extracellularly for up to 1 week with no decrease in viability ..."
And "... were able to reinvade cells and establish stable infections at all time points."
"The ability of Wolbachia bacteria to survive outside host cells may increase the probability of successful horizontal transfer and the exploitation of new ecological niches." Source: http://aem.asm.org/content/72/11/6934
The book Immunology, Inflammation and Diseases of the Eye by E. Pearlman and K. Gentil (on page 91) states:
Wolbachia "is most numerous in the mammalian host compared with the insect stage ... Elevated Wolbachia DNA and even intact Wolbachia are detected in the blood." Further along, it states "within 7 days in the mammalian host, bacteria numbers increased 600-fold." Therefore, it would be fairly easy to add Wolbachia to serologic testing.
"Wolbachia spp. should be further evaluated as causes of human infection, especially as Wolbachia infection of mosquitoes is increasingly considered to be a tool for interfering with mosquito-borne transmission of human pathogens" (Chen, Dong, et al., 2015). NOTE: Filariodea coxI gene was not found in this case which points to mosquito-to-human transmission. Source: http://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(14)00040-8/fulltext
The 20 approved states are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and West Virginia, as well as Washington, DC.
We need to stop these releases and unfortunately endangered species have MORE legal protection than humans. Our petition to help (we have 698 supporters now): https://www.change.org/p/investigate-north-atlantic-right-whale-deaths-without-the-noaa-a-u-s-gov-t-agency