Indonesia: Experts use 'Wolbachia' bacteria for breeding 'good mosquitoes' against dengue

To counter the growing problem of dengue, researchers from Indonesia have turned to a method of breeding "good mosquitoes" using a bacteria that would curb the population of dengue-causing mosquitoes. It may sound contradictory, but the experts plan to inject the Wolbachia bacteria into the mosquitoes, as the microorganism reportedly causes sterilisation in the insects. Earlier, this method has proved to be successful in Australia, where the researchers saw a significant decline in the dengue-causing mosquito population.

Wolbachia - the game-changing bacteria

A bacteria named Wolbachia, can prove to be a game-changer in eradicating dengue according to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). In Indonesia, the researchers are following the same path as the Australians where they would mate the mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia, to the Aedes aegypti mosquito, that carries the disease. As per a report by TechiLive, Purwanti, a World Mosquito Program (WMP) community cadre said,

"In principle, we are breeding the ‘good’ mosquitoes.The mosquitoes carrying dengue will mate with mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia, which will produce Wolbachia mosquitoes – the ‘good’ mosquitoes. So even if they bite people, it won’t affect them."

Currently, 100-400 million cases of dengue-infections are reported every year, and almost half of the globe's population is at risk owing to its rapid rise in the last decade, says the World Health Organization (WHO). This experiment in Indonesia follows the footsteps of the Australian researchers, who achieved outstanding results using the same technique.

The research in Australia 

The research of using the bacteria on mosquitoes was jointly conducted by CSIRO, the University of Queensland, Verily Life Sciences, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, and James Cook University. As part of the project, the researchers had released nearly 3 million male mosquitoes, in 2018, which were sterilised with the Wolbachia bacteria across three Queensland trial sites over the period of 20 weeks. During the research, when the female Aedes aegypti mosquitos mated with those sterilised males and later produced eggs, it was observed that those eggs had failed to hatch.

Moreover, the experts discovered that mosquito populations in the testing locations fell by 80 to 97 per cent within a year. The CSIRO further revealed that the method could also be used to eradicate the virus-carrying Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus and the Aedes aegypti itself that also carries Zika virus and the virus for yellow fever.

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