The Microbes: Fighting Mosquito-Transmitted Viruses With Bacteria That Infect Many Insects

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiSOeOCe-zM&feature=player_embedded

Key Ideas:

· A type of bacteria that infects many insects (Wolbachia) may make mosquitoes more resistant to viruses that can be dangerous to humans.

· The discovery could be helpful in the battles against the diseases of dengue and chikungunya.

· The Wolbachia infection makes a certain mosquito more resistant to some diseases.

· The bacteria strengthen the mosquito’s immune system and may use up some fatty acids that the viruses need to reproduce.

· Infecting mosquitoes with bacteria is tedious, but the bacteria then pass on to succeeding generations, and can prevent uninfected embryos from surviving.

Reflection:

This story was about a type of mosquito that could be injected with bacteria that prevents humans from getting diseases of dengue (hemorrhagic fever) and chikungunya (an insct-borne virus that is transmitted to humans by virus-carrying Aedes mosquitoes). I chose this story because I don’t like mosquitoes. They are bothersome and I don’t think that they do anything good in their habitat. Some implications of this story are that disease can be prevented by cutting the lifespan of mosquitoes in half and that through evolution, these mosquitoes will pass on these traits when they reproduce. This could lead to breakthroughs in science. Bacteria being injected into insects is like the processes taken to create genetically modified foods. I think that this is very interesting. This course helped me to understand this topic because we studied bacteria and viruses.

MLA: McNeil, Donald G. "Microbes: Fighting Mosquito-Transmitted Viruses With Bacteria That Infect Many Insects." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 4 Jan. 2010. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/health/05glob.html?scp=3&sq=viruses&st=cse.