Google parent company is developing genetically made mosquitoes to eradicate malaria

News24xx.com - The parent of the tech giant Google, Alphabet, began to divert its attention in effort to eradicate the communicable disease, Malaria. This was seen when the researchers began working in a super-sophisticated laboratory to develop the Wolbachia Aedes aegypti mosquito, Wolbachia itslef is a bacteria that can infect a mosquito

Wolbachia mosquitoes work by suppressing the reproductive abilities of mosquitoes in the wild. When male mosquitoes from the laboratory are released and mated with wild mosquitoes, the eggs they produce will not hatch.

The laboratory which is run by a subsidiary of Alphabet, Verily Life Sciences, is currently still in the experimental stage in the California area. Every morning during April-November the van goes around releasing mosquitoes in locations that have been determined by logarithms.

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Quoted from Bloomberg, Monday, February 4th 2019, which distinguishes Verily's laboratory from other laboratories in the world, almost all efforts are made automatically. The robots are in charge of treating mosquitoes from the egg to the adult, separating the gender, and releasing it. Each group of mosquitoes is given a digital identifier so that it can be traced to the release process.

One researcher Jacob Crawford said the main goal of the project was how to increase the scale of production of Wolbachia mosquitoes in various parts of the world. The same project is said to have started running in Australia and managed to reduce the population of Aedes mosquitoes to 80 percent. "The main key is how to run the program in a cheap and efficient way. Thus, we can do it in places with not much funds" Jacob said.

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