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A bird's eye view of Alphabet's campus in California, behind an iron gate entomologists are breeding mosquitoes in biosafety protection laboratories, working for the search giant and working hard to create automated insect farms.
This is a new project by Variily, a subsidiary of Alphabet's life sciences, which hopes to control the spread of dengue and Zika virus in various regions, including the United States, by releasing millions or even hundreds of millions of sterilized mosquitoes.
The program received strong support from Alphabet, including the design and manufacture of new equipment for mosquito breeding, the development of geospatial software to track mosquitoes, and plans to release mosquitoes from the experimental vehicle in the suburbs in previous tests.
The big public health problem that seems to be in the forefront seems to be unstoppable in Silicon Valley. Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would spend $3 billion over the next century to solve "all disease problems." Verily's project is also involved in the field of Microsoft's rich Bill Gates, whose foundation invested $40 million in the "Destroyed Dengue Program", which is also a mosquito-related project, they are preparing for Rio de Janeiro and Colombia. Medellin began a large-scale investment.
The Verily project, which is still in its infancy, is the brainchild of LinusUpson. As a senior Google engineer, Upson is the former head of Chrome.
"There are more people killed by mosquitoes than any other animal, and now Google can solve this problem," Upson said.
Zika virus and dengue fever are transmitted by Aedes aegypti, which is widely distributed in Latin America and has signs of spreading northward. This year, the mosquitoes began to spread Zika virus in Miami, making the first case of infection in the United States.
Verily announced the plan because they wanted to test the mosquitoes they had cultivated and a series of plans. Upson said: "Although people in some parts of the United States are asking for help, if we really want to release the mosquitoes we cultivate in the real world, we must first communicate with the local people and departments. This is different. Ordinary online customer service."
Upson refused to disclose which area, city or country to test first. He only said that he was still negotiating with the organization. As one of Alphabet's many “betsâ€, Verily, along with three other subsidiaries (GoogleFiber, anti-aging company Calico and Nest), burned $1.6 billion in the first half of 2016. For the Silicon Valley giant's mosquito farm creation plan, some investors said they need to be carefully considered.
Alphabet's life sciences subsidiary has embarked on a new round of adventures, including the development of micro-glucometers and the $700 million bioelectronic drug developed in collaboration with Glaxo, although these moves have been widely criticized by skeptics for their impracticality. And out of reach.
As Vice President of Verily Engineering, Upson spent a year investigating all aspects of mosquitoes, and his consultants even attended a conference in Hawaii where mosquitoes are threatening the survival of native birds.
Australian entomologist Scott O'Neill, who led the campaign to eradicate dengue fever, said: "I know they are interested, but this work needs to be done in a confidential state."
Verily has considered a variety of methods to control mosquito breeding. One of the techniques that Upson has focused on is genetically driven—allowing mosquitoes to carry an artificial “selfish†DNA that is replicated to their offspring, and this particular gene can cause female mosquitoes to sterilize and destroy them. the goal of.
Upson said the technology is controversial and is still in the early stages of research. Therefore, Verily also gave up the opportunity to acquire Oxitec in the UK. The company's business scope is mainly for the testing of mosquitoes with genetic editing technology, and was later acquired by the US biosynthesis group Intrexon for $160 million.
In the end, Verily chose a relatively conservative approach to renovating mosquitoes – infecting mosquitoes with Wolbachia bacteria. When a male mosquito carrying Wolbachia mates with an ordinary female mosquito, the eggs of the female mosquito cannot be fertilized normally and the larva cannot develop. This is a way to control the reproduction of mosquitoes.
The release of millions of male mosquitoes in the suburbs or cities can lead to the extinction of mosquitoes.
The development of Wolbachia bacterial technology is well established and can be considered safe. In the United States it has been used as a less restrictive biopesticide. MosquitoMate, based in Kentucky, has tested the technology in Los Angeles and adjacent Fresno, and the trials did not cause any public protest.
According to Guy Reeves, evolutionary biologist at Maple, "If your motto is 'don'tbeevil' (from Google's motto), then this is a very good field. We can not threaten it at all. Effective control of mosquitoes under the premise of ecological stability."
There have been instances where male sterilization techniques are effective. In a decade-long battle against pests, researchers spread sterilised spiral maggots from Texas to the Isthmus of Panama, giving the herd a good control. The US Department of Agriculture has spread sterile flower flies in California. These insects are sterilized by radiation technology.
The control of mosquitoes is basically in the hands of the public health department, so we don't know how Verily can make money through it. Upson said that Google often launch products that can't be profitable immediately, such as the free Chrome browser. "We don't need to know all the answers before we start to act, we will see where it is going," Upson said.
Verily is convinced that mosquito breeding can be made faster and cheaper. The project is moving in the direction of automation, with the goal of achieving automatic breeding of mosquitoes and classification of males and females. These operations now also rely on manual operations - allowing mosquitoes to be achieved by manually shaking the filter. Upson said: "This technology is still labor intensive, and we hope to introduce engineering technology to further reduce costs and achieve mass production."
[Zhejiang Pharmaceutical Network Technology News] Zika virus and dengue fever are transmitted by Aedes aegypti, which is widely distributed in Latin America and has signs of spreading northward. To this end, entomologists have planned the Verily project to control the virus by releasing millions or even hundreds of millions of mosquitoes that have been sterilized.