About the episode
Mosquitoes can transmit all kinds of nasty diseases. Everyone knows malaria, but the family of our own house-garden-and-kitchen mosquito can also give us West Nile virus, African horse sickness, Rift Valley fever and encephalitis.
Mosquitoes also have their own important place in ecosystems, but if we had more control over some populations, we would also have more control over how many people die from one of the diseases that mosquitoes can transmit.
And so, researchers worldwide are working on all kinds of solutions. In California they tackle it at the root, or rather: the seed. When mosquitoes mate, they do so tail to tail. Thus, the males bring the sperm cells into the reproductive tract of the females. It can survive there for a while, but eventually the cells still have to swim a bit.
To be able to move, the tails of the sperm cells must be activated and this is done with the help of special proteins. They have now discovered exactly what they are in research. And yes: for that they first had to get enough seed from their miniscule reproductive ducts with at least 200 mosquitoes.
Experiments are still underway to find a way to switch off these proteins in some of the male mosquitoes, so that they become infertile. In this way, the researchers hope to be able to control mosquito populations without having to completely eradicate the animals.
They hope that the find will also be interesting for other mosquito species such as the malaria mosquito and possibly even for fertility research in humans.
Read more about the research here: Humans bite back by deactivating mosquito sperm.