SCIENTISTS DEVELOP ARTIFICIAL BLOOD FOR MOSQUITOES

Dealing with mosquitoes can be one hell of a process. It can mean slapping yourself hard in the middle of the night when you try to hit it against your skin. Fumigating your house with tonnes of insecticides, leaving you breathless would be another option or simply sleeping under a treated mosquito net. All this we do just to deny it a sip of our blood. This is also because mosquitoes have been called the deadliest animal on the planet, because of the diseases they spread. As this reality stands an artificial buffet for them would be appropriate, isn’t it?

Welcome to Stephen Dobson’s finding. The professor of medicine and Vetinary entomology believes his mosquito food may lead to fewer mosquitoes. But how exactly?

Through a press release he explains that, the artificial blood he developed will allow people in remote areas around the world to sustain colonies of mosquitoes, even in those areas with limited resources and difficult logistics. Colonies that will later be used in studying the blood sucker.

“Multiple, new approaches to control mosquito populations require the ability to rear mosquitoes,” Dobson said. “The artificial blood technology will help us to better fight disease-transmitting mosquitoes in resource-limited areas.”

In one approach patented by the University of Kentucky, mosquitoes are essentially sterilized by a naturally occurring bacterium, called Wolbachia. With an ability to rear large mosquito numbers, the approach can be used as an organic pesticide, to overwhelm and sterilize mosquito populations that transmit diseases like malaria, flilaria, dengue and yellow fever. Once sterilized, the mosquito population declines and can be eliminated.

Dobson’s research on developing artificial blood for mosquitoes has made him a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, in an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mosquitoes spread deadly diseases like malaria, Yellow fever, West Nile, Chikungunya and many others.