//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Step-by-step – According to the World Health Organization, malaria affects hundreds of millions of people around the world, killing more than 400,000 annually. Decades of insecticide use has failed to control mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite and has led to insecticide-resistance among many mosquito strains. In response, scientists began genetically modifying mosquitoes and other organisms that can help eradicate mosquitoes. Until now, none of these transgenic approaches made it beyond laboratory testing. In a research paper published in the May 31, 2019, issue of the journal Science, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland and Burkina Faso described the first trial outside the laboratory of a transgenic approach to combating malaria. The study showed that a naturally occurring fungus engineered to deliver a toxin to mosquitoes safely reduced mosquito populations by more than 99% in a screen-enclosed, simulated village setting in Burkina Faso, West Africa. “No transgenic malaria control has come this far down the road toward actual field testing,” said Brian Lovett, a graduate student in UMD’s Department of Entomology and the lead author of the paper. “This paper marks a big step and sets a precedent for this and other transgenic methods to move forward.” “We demonstrated that the efficacy of the transgenic fungi is so much better than the wild type that it justifies continued development,” said Raymond St. Leger, a Distinguished University Professor of Entomology at UMD and co-author of the study. The fungus is a naturally occurring pathogen that infects insects in the wild and kills them slowly. It has been used to control various pests for centuries. The scientists used a strain of the fungus that is specific to mosquitoes and engineered it to produce a toxin that kills mosquitoes more rapidly than they can breed. This transgenic fungus caused mosquito populations in their test site to collapse to unsustainable levels within two generations. “You can think of the fungus as a hypodermic needle we use to deliver a potent insect-specific toxin into the mosquito,” said St. Leger. The toxin is an insecticide called Hybrid. It is derived from the venom of the Australian Blue Mountains funnel-web spider and has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for application directly on crops to control agricultural insect pests. “Simply applying the transgenic fungus to a sheet that we hung on a wall in our study area caused the mosquito populations to crash within 45 days,” Lovett said. “And it is as effective at killing insecticide-resistant mosquitoes as non-resistant ones.” Lovett said laboratory tests suggest that the fungus will infect the gamut of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The abundance of species that transmit malaria has hindered efforts to control the disease, because not all species respond to the same treatment methods. To modify the fungus Metarhizium pingshaense so that it would produce and deliver Hybrid, the University of Maryland research team used a standard method that employs a bacterium to intentionally transfer DNA into fungi. The DNA the scientists designed and introduced into the fungi provided the blueprints for making Hybrid along with a control switch that tells the fungus when to make the toxin. The control switch is a copy of the fungus’ own DNA code. Its normal function is to tell the fungus when to build a defensive shell around itself so that it can hide from an insect’s immune system. Building that shell is costly for the fungus, so it only makes the effort when it detects the proper surroundings — inside the bloodstream of a mosquito. By combining the genetic code for that switch with the code for making Hybrid, the scientists were able to ensure that their modified fungus only produces the toxin inside the body of a mosquito. They tested their modified fungus on other insects in Maryland and Burkina Faso, and found that the fungus was not harmful to beneficial species such as honeybees. “These fungi are very selective,” St. Leger said. “They know where they are from chemical signals and the shapes of features on an insect’s body. The strain we are working with likes mosquitoes. When this fungus detects that it is on a mosquito, it penetrates the mosquito’s cuticle and enters the insect. It won’t go to that trouble for other insects, so it’s quite safe for beneficial species such as honeybees.” After demonstrating the safety of their genetically modified fungus in the lab, Lovett and St. Leger worked closely with scientific colleagues and government authorities in Burkina Faso to test it in a controlled environment that simulated nature. In a rural, malaria-endemic area of Burkina Faso, they constructed a roughly 6,550-square-foot, screened-in structure they called MosquitoSphere. Inside, multiple screened chambers contained experimental huts, plants, small mosquito-breeding pools and a food source for the mosquitoes. In one set of experiments, the researchers hung a black cotton sheet coated with sesame oil on the wall of a hut in each of three chambers. One sheet received oil mixed with the transgenic fungus Metarhizium pingshaense, one received oil with wild-type Metarhizium and one received only sesame oil. Then, they released 1,000 adult male and 500 adult female mosquitoes into each chamber of MosquitoSphere to establish breeding populations. The researchers then counted mosquitoes in each chamber every day for 45 days. In the chamber containing the sheet treated with the transgenic fungus, mosquito populations plummeted over 45 days to just 13 adult mosquitoes. That is not enough for the males to create a swarm, which is required for mosquitoes to breed. By comparison, the researchers counted 455 mosquitoes in the chamber treated with wild-type fungus and 1,396 mosquitoes in the chamber treated with plain sesame oil after 45 days. They ran this experiment multiple times with the same dramatic results. In similar experiments in the lab, the scientists also found that females infected with transgenic fungus laid just 26 eggs, only three of which developed into adults, whereas uninfected females laid 139 eggs that resulted in 74 adults. According to the researchers, it is critically important that new anti-malarial technologies, such as the one tested in this study, are easy for local communities to employ. Black cotton sheets and sesame oil are relatively inexpensive and readily available locally. The practice also does not require people to change their behavior, because the fungus can be applied in conjunction with pesticides that are commonly used today. “By following EPA and World Health Organization protocols very closely, working with the central and local government to meet their criteria and working with local communities to gain acceptance, we’ve broken through a barrier,” Lovett said. “Our results will have broad implications for any project proposing to scale up new, complex and potentially controversial technologies for malaria eradication.” Next, the international team of scientists hope to test their transgenic fungus in a local village or community. There are many regulatory and social benchmarks to meet before deploying this new method in an open environment such as a village, but the researchers said this study helps make the case for such trials. //pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Get Our Newslatter Straight To Your Inbox via Secret Of Pet Secret Of Pet All Goods For Our Friends
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//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Right now – With flattened bodies, grabbing forelegs and deciduous wings, deer keds do not look like your typical fly. These parasites of deer — which occasionally bite humans — are more widely distributed across the U.S. than previously thought, according to Penn State entomologists, who caution that deer keds may transmit disease-causing bacteria. “It was more or less known where deer keds are found, but very broadly,” said Michael Skvarla, extension educator and director of the Insect Identification Lab in the Department of Entomology at Penn State. “We don’t know if deer keds transmit pathogens (disease-causing microorganisms), but if they do, then knowing where they are at more precisely could be important in terms of telling people to watch out for them.” The researchers collated records of the four North American deer ked species and produced the most detailed locality map of these flies to date, documenting ten new state and 122 new county records. The researchers published their results in a recent issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology. They also provided an illustrated species-identification key. The team harnessed citizen science — collection of data by the public — to gather deer ked records from the U.S. and Canada. In addition to scouring museum databases and community websites like BugGuide and iNaturalist, the team distributed deer ked collection kits to hunters as part of the Pennsylvania Parasite Hunters community project. The researchers also collected flies directly from carcasses at Pennsylvanian deer butcheries. “I really like using citizen science information,” said Skvarla. “It often fills in a lot of gaps because people are taking photographs in places that entomologists may not be going. Deer keds are the perfect candidate for citizen science. They’re easy to identify because there’s only four species in the country and because they’re mostly geographically separated. And as flat, parasitic flies, they’re really distinctive. You couldn’t do this with a lot of insect groups because they’d be too difficult to identify from photographs.” The European deer ked, Lipoptena cervi, thought to have been introduced from Europe, previously was reported to occur throughout the Northeast region. The researchers newly report this species from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and as far south as Virginia. In Pennsylvania, it occurs throughout the state, with 26 new county records. The researchers also describe new records of the neotropical deer ked, L. mazamae, from North Carolina, Tennessee and Missouri — increasing its range further north and east than had previously been reported. In western North America, two deer ked species, L. depressa and Neolipoptena ferrisi, are found from British Columbia through the U.S. and into Mexico — and as far east as South Dakota. The researchers newly report these species from Nevada and Idaho. Deer keds are usually found on deer, elk and moose, but occasionally bite humans and domestic mammals. Although several tick-borne pathogens — including bacteria that cause Lyme disease, cat scratch fever and anaplasmosis — have been detected in deer keds, it is unknown whether they can be transmitted through bites. “In Pennsylvania you have a lot of hunters,” said Skvarla. “Deer keds can run up your arm while you’re field dressing a deer and bite you. If these insects are picking up pathogens from deer, they could transmit them to hunters. With two million hunters in the state, that’s not an insignificant portion of the population. We don’t want to scare people, but people should be aware there is the potential for deer keds to transmit pathogens that can cause disease.” The researchers will next screen hundreds of deer keds for pathogens. They will also dissect some insects to screen the salivary glands and guts separately. According to Skvarla, this approach will give a good indication of whether deer keds could transmit pathogens through bites, or whether the bacteria are merely passed through the gut after a blood meal. In Pennsylvania, after deer keds emerge from the soil each fall, they fly to a host and immediately shed their wings, usually remaining on the same host for life. Females produce just one egg at a time — it hatches inside her, and she feeds the growing larva with a milk-like substance. When the larva is almost fully developed, it drops to the soil and forms a pupa, eventually emerging as a winged adult. If disease-causing bacteria are transmitted from mother to offspring, newly emerged flies could pass on pathogens to hosts. Pathogens could also be spread when bacteria-harboring flies jump between animals in close contact. The other researcher working on this project was Erika Machtinger, assistant professor of entomology at Penn State. Story Source: Materials provided by Penn State. 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And in the time since burning has been curtailed, forests are changing, with species such as oak, hickory and pine losing ground. “The debate about whether forest composition has been largely determined by land use or climate continues, but a new study strongly suggests anthropogenic fire has been the major driver of forest change in the East,” said Abrams. “That is important to know because climate change is taking on an ever larger proportion of scientific endeavor.” But this phenomenon does not apply to other regions, Abrams noted. In the western U.S., for example, climate change has been much more pronounced than in the East. That region has received much more warming and much more drought, he explained. “Here in the East, we have had a slight increase in precipitation that has ameliorated the warming,” said Abrams. To learn the drivers of forest change, researchers used a novel approach, analyzing both pollen and charcoal fossil records along with tree-census studies to compare historic and modern tree composition in the forests of eastern North America. They looked at seven forest types in the north and central regions of the eastern United States. Those forest types encompass two distinct floristic zones — conifer-northern hardwood and sub-boreal to the north, and oak-pine to the south. The researchers found that in the northernmost forests, present-day pollen and tree-survey data revealed significant declines in beech, pine, hemlock and larches, and increases in maple, poplar, ash, oak and fir. In forests to the south, both witness tree and pollen records pointed to historic oak and pine domination, with declines in oak and chestnut and increases in maple and birch, based on present-day data. “Modern forests are dominated by tree species that are increasingly cool-adapted, shade-tolerant, drought-intolerant pyrophobes — trees that are reduced when exposed to repeated forest burning,” Abrams said. “Species such as oak are largely promoted by low-to moderate-level forest fires. Furthermore, this change in forest composition is making eastern forests more vulnerable to future fire and drought.” Researchers also included human population data for the region, going back 2,000 years, to bolster their findings, which recently were published in the Annals of Forest Science. After hundreds of years of fairly stable levels of fire caused by relatively low numbers of Native Americans in the region, they report, the most significant escalation in burning followed the dramatic increase in human population associated with European settlement prior to the early 20th century. Moreover, it appears that low numbers of Native Americans were capable of burning large areas of the eastern U.S. and did so repeatedly. After 1940, they found, fire suppression was an ecologically transformative event in all forests. “Our analysis identifies multiple instances in which fire and vegetation changes were likely driven by shifts in human population and land use beyond those expected from climate alone,” Abrams said. “After Smokey Bear came on the scene, fire was mostly shut down throughout the U.S. and we have been paying a big price for that in terms of forest change. We went from a moderate amount of fire to too much fire to near zero fire — and we need to get back to that middle ground in terms of our vegetation management.” Also involved in the research was Gregory J. Nowacki, with the Eastern Regional Office, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. The Agricultural Experiment Station of Penn State funded this research. Story Source: Materials provided by Penn State. Original written by Jeff Mulhollem. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. //pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Get Closer To Your Pet
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