Source: Dengue fever outbreak halted by release of special mosquitoes | Society | The Guardian The first large-scale deployment of mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria, which makes them unable to transmit viruses, has stopped all outbreaks of dengue fever in a city in northern Australia for the last four years. The success of the project in Townsville, Queensland, will encourage hopes that Wolbachia can provide a knockout blow against the Zika virus in Brazil as well, where the mosquitoes have been introduced into the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Until now, the technology has looked promising but has only been tried in small pilot projects around the world of 1 to 1.5 square km. . . . Bob Wilson
this new reality is wonderful. i heard they were trying it with zika, and more recently with deer ticks.
Bacteria interfering with virus' activities must be among earth's oldest stories. Now humans reach a level where they can move some of those chess pieces around. Flip these adversaries and read about using virus against human bacterial infections. Not offering a reading assignment but those inclined will find them readily. Tsetse flies in Africa have been a research area for a long time. They deliver trypanosomes (single-cell eukaryotes) to humans and ruminants. Wolbachia will not be the answer there, indeed the flies have their own palls from that bacterial genus. Perhaps to keep some virus away. In any case, that fly (and sleeping sickness) will eventually get beat by science. Good news for our side. But bad news in that tsetse has been about the only thing keeping African tropical forests (mostly) intact for decades.
