Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Hey, Let's Genetically Modify Some Skeeters And Release Them... What Could Possibly Go Wrong?




In Brazil's microcephaly epidemic, one vital question remains unanswered: how did the Zika virus suddenly learn how to disrupt the development of human embryos? The answer may lie in a sequence of 'jumping DNA' used to engineer the virus's mosquito vector - and released into the wild four years ago in the precise area of Brazil where the microcephaly crisis is most acute.

 

 

Pandora's box: how GM mosquitos could have caused Brazil's microcephaly disaster

5 comments:

  1. If that's what has happened, that would be very interesting. It was males that were GMOs, and only the females bite. So there would be a serious and very unpredictable jump into humans. It's just possible that the boffins are simply grasping at straws and don't really know what has happened.

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  2. Might not be a stretch at all if the offspring survival rate is 15% as the article states.
    Half of them should be female.

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  3. Might not be a stretch at all if the offspring survival rate is 15% as the article states.
    Half of them should be female.

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  4. If you read to the end you see that the hypothese was tested. The Zika virus genome (which is fairly small) was tested and the piggyBac sequence was not found. This means the Zika virus did not transport the piggyBac 'gene' into the victims. The virus appears to have done the damage on its own.

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