BAY CITY, MI — A concept straight out of a science fiction story became the focus of a conference in Bay City.
Derric Nimmo was the keynote speaker at a Tuesday, Feb. 6, Michigan Mosquito Control Association 27th Annual Conference presentation centering on his Great Britain-based biotechnology company’s dabblings in genetically altering the DNA of mosquitoes as a means of population control.
Nimmo is the spokesperson for Oxitec, Ltd., a 35-employee company founded in 2002 that uses radiation to alter the genes of the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus breeds of mosquitos.
The effect does one of two things: renders the males sterile, or causes their offspring to die before adulthood.
Both results reduce mosquito populations when the mutant mosquitoes are released into a population, Nimmo told Tuesday’s crowd of about 150 people at Bay City’s Doubletree hotel. Some of the audience consisted of mosquito control officials from Bay and Saginaw counties, where a .45-mill tax expiring in 2015 and a .5-mill tax expiring this year exist, respectively.
The breed of mosquitoes are carriers for the human diseases known as yellow fever, dengue fever and chikungunya.
Derric Nimmo
Nimmo coins the gene-altering procedure RIDL, an acronym for "release of insects with a dominant lethality."
He says his company’s efforts are an “environmentally friendly” way of “targeting insect pests that are damaging agriculture and human health worldwide.”
“The sterile insect technique has been around since the 1950s,” he says. “Basically, you release your males into the population, and you just keep releasing your sterile insects and, over time, you get your control.”
He showed the audience how his company sterilizes the mosquitoes using a needle to inject an irradiated substance into the insect, altering the breed’s gene structure.
“It’s not particularly toxic,” Nimmo says. “It just needs to be put in the right place at the right amount.”
The company then raises colonies of the mosquitoes before sending the breeds to a target area.
Oxitec has released the mosquito in other nations including the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Brazil.
He says the method has resulted in an 85 percent reduction in the mosquito population within three months, and does not affect predators which consume the breeds.
Similar methods have been used to control populations of other insects including screenworms, Mediterranean fruit flies, melon flies, and Queensland fruit flies in Australia.
He touted the gene-altering method over traditional methods for controlling insect populations including pesticides, saying pesticides can affect crops and sometimes are ineffective against populations that live near humans, away from where pesticide often is used.
Nimmo's talk in Bay City kicked off a conference — all about mosquitos — that spans Wednesday and Thursday at the DoubleTree.