A study out of the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that one of the best ways to control mosquito-borne diseases like Dengue, Zika, and Yellow Fever is by cock blocking mosquitoes. Specifically, cock blocking males by making them deaf, which prevents them from mating with female mosquitoes, thus reducing their populations.
Mosquitoes mate in mid-air. Males rely on their ability to hear the fluttering wings of females to locate them. If you make them deaf, they can’t hear the wing beats of the female mosquito, and therefore will not have sex. This discovery is thanks to a specific gene called trpVa, which plays a crucial role in a mosquito’s sense of sound.
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The researchers created genetically modified “deaf” mosquitoes using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology. When they hit mating age, the males showed no interest in mating at all, even after they had been placed around females for several days. Normally males would mate multiple times with females so readily available.
The ability to hear, it turns out, is so vitally important to the mosquito mating process that if you cut it out entirely the thought of mating doesn’t even cross their mind. The researchers now think that the same process can be applied to mosquito types from all over the world.
It should be noted that female mosquitoes are the ones that spread disease. So this method isn’t so much about preventing females from making people sick as it is about reducing the overall population of mosquitoes, thus reducing the chances of them biting people. But the forced deafness cock blocking technique could be paired with other methods to further reduce mosquito-to-human infection, like the Sterile Insect Technique, or SIT, which involves releasing sterile males so they can futilely mate with females.
